Madrid, 24 (Europe Press)
Color images include the Robinson projection, Mercator projection, azimuth projection, and orthographic projection for the eastern and western hemispheres of the Red Planet, with a spatial resolution of 76 meters per pixel.
They were launched jointly by the China National Space Administration and the Chinese Academy of Sciences at a ceremony marking China’s Space Day on April 24, commemorating the launch of China’s first satellite on that date in 1970.
The panoramic images were made by processing 14,757 images taken by the medium-resolution camera on the Tianwen 1 Mars rover during 284 remote-sensing maneuvers from November 2021 to July 2022.
The administration said they are expected to provide better base maps to scientists and engineers around the world to facilitate their research and planning for future missions to Mars.
Named after an ancient Chinese poem, Tianwen 1 was launched on July 23, 2020, becoming the country’s first independent planetary exploration effort.
The spacecraft traveled about 475 million kilometers and performed several maneuvers on the trajectory before entering Mars orbit in February 2021.
The mission’s Jurong rover, named after the god of fire in ancient Chinese myth, landed on the planet in May 2021 and then began traveling across the surface of Mars to perform science missions.
Zhurong and the Tianwen 1 orbiter, which is orbiting Mars to transmit signals for the rover and also conducts science operations, sent about 1,800 gigabytes of raw data to Earth.
Zhurong has moved 1921 meters on the red planet and is now inactive.
By studying Tianwen 1 images and data, Chinese scientists have discovered and identified several geological objects surrounding the Tianwen 1 landing site, and named 22 of them after Chinese villages with famous historical and cultural heritage.
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