China has released the first global panoramic images of Mars taken by the country’s Tianwen 1 mission. The images were jointly released by the China National Space Administration and the Chinese Academy of Sciences at a ceremony in Hefei, the capital of Anhui province, marking the launch of the Space Day of China activities this year. The panoramas were created by processing 14,757 images taken by the mid-definition camera mounted on the Tianwen 1’s Martian orbiter during its 284 remote-sensing maneuvers from November 2021 to July 2022. They are expected to provide better base maps to scientists and engineers around the world to facilitate research and planning for future expeditions to Mars. The panoramas have put an end to China’s dependence on foreign base maps of Mars, and they will help the international science community a lot in its research of Mars. The mission’s entire scientific data will be available to scientists, as well as members of the public, around the world. Named after an ancient Chinese poem, Tianwen 1 was launched on July 23, 2020, and it became the country’s first independent interplanetary exploration endeavor. The Mars rover, Zhurong, named after the god of fire in ancient Chinese legend, touched down on the planet in May 2021 and then began to travel across the Martian surface for scientific tasks.
