BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s first space exploration mission to Mars has taken its first photo of the red planet, the space agency said Friday, about six months after the probe left Earth.
The unmanned Tianwen-1 took the photo about 2.2 million km (1.4 million miles) from Mars, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA), which provided a black and white photo.
The probe is now only half that distance from Mars and about 184 million km from Earth after 197 days of the mission, the CNSA said in a statement, adding that the systems were in good working order.
The Tianwen-1 was launched from the southern island of Hainan in China in July and is expected to reach Mars orbit this month. In May, it will attempt to land in Utopia Planitia, a plain in the Northern Hemisphere, and deploy a rover to explore for 90 days.
If successful, China’s Tianwen-1 will make China the first country to orbit, land and deploy a rover for its inaugural mission to Mars, further bolstering China’s space credentials after being the first country last year that brought back monsters from the moon since the 1970s.
China previously made a bid for Mars in 2011 with Russia, but the Russian spacecraft with the probe was unable to leave Earth’s orbit and disintegrated over the Pacific Ocean.
Reporting by Ryan Woo; written by Tom Daly; edited by Nick Macfie