Beijing:
An unmanned Chinese spacecraft has collected image data from all over Mars, including images of the south pole, after it orbited the planet more than 1,300 times since early last year, state media reported Wednesday.
China’s Tianwen-1 successfully reached the Red Planet in February 2021 during the country’s inaugural mission there. Since then, a robotic rover has been deployed on the surface while an orbiter surveyed the planet from space.
In 2018, an orbiting European Space Agency probe discovered water beneath the ice at the planet’s south pole.
Other Tianwen-1 images include images of the 4,000-km-long Valles Marineris canyon and impact craters from highlands in northern Mars known as Arabia Terra.
Tianwen-1 also returned high-resolution images of the rim of the massive Maunder crater, as well as an overhead view of the 18,000-foot-tall Ascraeus Mons, a large shield volcano first detected by NASA’s Mariner 9 spacecraft more than five decades ago. .
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