In a significant development, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced that the Mars mission rover and orbiter tianwen-1 have completed their scientific study. After working on Mars for 706 days and circling it more than 1.344 times, the orbiting probe has acquired medium-resolution images of the entire planet.
Tianwen-1, an orbiter for a red planet (literally)
The Chinese mission tianwen-1 it includes a lander, an orbiter and a rover that has been named Zhuong. On May 15, 2021, the Chang'e 4 probe also reached Mars, the first time ever for a Chinese probe. Monitoring of the planet began in May 2021 and completed its 90-day mission on August 15 of the same year. However, he continued to explore further.
After traveling 1.921,5 meters across the planet, the rover temporarily entered sleep mode in May 2022 due to winter cold and dusty weather on Mars. It will resume operations in December 2022 when conditions improve.
A first complete map of Mars
After two years of flight and discovery, the rover and orbiter have amassed more than 1.040 GB of raw science data. According to reports, once all the information is collected, it will be transformed into standard scientific data that scientists will begin disseminating for further studies.
China has made it clear that the data collected on Mars will be shared with researchers around the world, and has encouraged scientists to ask them for their projects.
Not only that: CNSA also claimed to have shared data with the US space agency NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). The collaboration continued both for the prediction of collisions with asteroids and for in-orbit communication tests.
At least in space there is no smell of the Cold War yet.
