China’s Tianwen 1 probe takes a selfie on Mars with a removable Wi-Fi camera

Chinese space agency CNSA Four new images of the Tianwen 1 mission to Mars have been published, including the first complete image of a space probe in orbit with the Red Planet.

The wonderful selfie of the orbiter Tianwen 1 was captured with a Wi-Fi camera launched by the spacecraft itself in its polar orbit around Mars, which is currently about 350 million kilometers from Earth.

This is the third time that a Tianwen 1 mission has used one of these Excommunication Chambers. The first was used to photograph the probe itself On the way to Mars and the second for fotografiar Al Rover Zhurong on the surface of the planet.

as EurekaThis is the first complete selfie of a space probe orbiting Mars, but it’s not the first selfie of a probe flying over the Red Planet. This honor goes to the European spacecraft Rosetta, which on February 25, 2007 took a black and white image of its solar panel and part of its hull as it passed by Mars.

One of the images sent by Tianwen 1 shows the Chinese probe from a similar perspective. CNSA has also released a close-up of Mars’ north pole ice cap and a panorama taken by the Zhurong rover from the planet’s surface.

The Tianwen 1 orbiter and Zhurong rover were launched in July 2020 from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan Province.

Tianwen 1 entered Mars orbit on February 10, and Zhurong landed on May 15, 2021, making China the second country to successfully send a rover to Mars.

Zhurong worked 26 Mars days and traveled 1.4 kilometers on a barren plain known as Utopia Planitia. According to CNSA, it still has enough power and is in good shape.

The pair transmitted approximately 540 gigabytes of data to Earth.