Mars: breathtaking images of its surface taken by a Chinese probe

Mars breathtaking images of its surface taken by a Chinese

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[EN VIDÉO] Zhurong: his first sounds on Mars
Zhurong is the first Chinese rover to set foot on Mars. And on June 27, 2021, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) released a series of audio files he recorded. A first ! It was May 22, 2021, as the rover fired up its engines and rolled down the lander ramps to roll across the Red Planet’s floor. (Chinese translated to English) © CCTV Video News Agency

Take a picture of the entire surface of Mars. It was one of the missions assigned to Tianwen-1, the probe launched by China Space Administration (CNSA) in July 2020. The country’s first independent planetary exploration mission. And some 1,344 orbits after its arrival near the red planet in February 2021, Tianwen-1 finally managed to map its entire surface. All stored in over a thousand gigabytes of raw data.

Researchers will therefore now have at least one medium definition image of any Mars region. For some areas, they will even have high definition images. They will likely reveal valuable new information. In the meantime, place to wonder.

Guided tour of the planet Mars

With the images returned by Tianwen-1 of Valles Marineris, for example. The canyon system is gigantic: 4,000 kilometers long and depths of up to 7 kilometers. The astronomers still do not know how it was formed. But they suspect it took billions of years, from cracks that appeared when the Red Planet began to cool.

There are also new images of the crater Maunder, one of the deepest found on Mars. Or theAscraeus Monsa volcano more than 18 kilometers high which had been discovered by the Mariner 9 probe, some 50 years ago.

Important images from south pole of Mars, also. The region under which a vast subglacial lake filled with salt water is believed to be hidden. Potentially our best chance of finding any trace of life on the red planet.

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