Who Takes A Selfie On Mars

It’s a brilliant public relations move.

On Feb 10, 2021, China’s probe, Tianwen-1, reached Mars.

Once it arrived, it was successful in achieving orbit, which was one step in a multi-phase mission. The probe contained a lander/rover duo.

The name of the rover was released just before the landing on Mars. It's called Zhurong and its named after the god of fire.

The Zhurong Mars lander/rover successfully landed on Mars on May 15 after an exciting descent to the surface. They captured some interesting video footage of the last bit of the landing.

A week later, it proceeded to detach the rover from the lander, and wheel it down a ramp onto the surface of the planet.

More interesting footage was shared with the world.

It’s pretty cool to watch. First, you see the view of the ramp from the rover’s point of view, and then the camera reverses to show you the view of the lander behind it.

Next, they took a selfie.

In a brilliant maneuver, the Zhurong Mars rover placed a wireless camera on the ground. It then moved into position and took a self-portrait of itself and the lander.

Now that they are finished with the selfie part of the mission, the rover plans to perform many standardized tests.

Surface soil, water/ice distribution, and rock analysis are the usual tasks a rover performs after landing on a moon or a planet. The Zhurong rover carries a Subsurface Exploration Radar instrument and multispectral cameras and instruments for analysis.

Between NASA's images of the landing site of the Zhurong, and the Tianwen-1 images, there’s a great opportunity to collaborate.

One interesting development is wind sound, which both rovers are recording.

Researchers are trying to correlate audio it detects with data from the Perseverance rover’s weather station with the sounds from the Zhurong to study wind patterns.

It’s one of those serendipitous developments which may or may not add to the discoveries happening right now on Mars.

Sources: Nature.com, Wikimedia