China releases first images of Mars captured by its Tianwen-1 probe

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has released the first video images of Mars captured by its Tianwen-1 probe, which has been in orbit of the Red Planet since last Wednesday and is due to land with a module and a rover next May.

The two videos, each just under a minute long, were taken as Tianwen-1 entered Mars orbit after a six-and-a-half month journey from Earth.

The images were released late on Friday to coincide with China's celebration of the first day of the lunar New Year. "Tianwen-1 sent the New Year's blessing from distant Mars," the CNSA said on its website, while releasing the images.

The videos show the slight vibration of the probe as it fired its thrusters to slow down and enter Martian orbit. Several craters on the surface of Mars can then be seen as the spacecraft begins to rotate in the planet's elliptical orbit, which takes ten Earth days to fully traverse. The images also show the solar panels that supply power to the spacecraft.

Tianwen-1, which includes a mooring module and a rover, is China's first Mars exploration mission and the world's first to include travel, orbit entry and descent in a single mission.

If successful, the Asian giant will become the third country to successfully explore the planet, decades after the United States and the then Soviet Union.

The lander is scheduled to land next May on Utopia Planitia in the northern hemisphere of Mars and a rover will descend to explore the planet for three months.

The mission is estimated to cost around $8 billion (6.596 billion euros).

Since its entry into orbit on Wednesday, the Tianwen-1 ("Questions to the Sky" in Chinese, a reference to a classic poem) teams, which include cameras and particle analysers, have begun taking photographs and reconnaissance of Mars, as well as preparations for choosing the best landing site.

The probe was launched on 23 July 2020 from the Wenchang centre on the southern island of Hainan. It has travelled in the firmament 475 million kilometres for 202 days and carried out four orbital corrections and one deep space manoeuvre. When it entered the Martian orbit, it was 192 million kilometres from Earth. The shortest distance to Mars from the probe's elliptical orbit is about 400 kilometres.