my country's first Mars exploration mission achieves rich scientific results

According to the National Space Administration on September 18, as of September 15, 2022, the Tianwen-1 orbiter has been in orbit for more than 780 days, the Mars rover has traveled a total of 1,921 meters, completed the established scientific exploration mission, and obtained 1,480GB of original scientific exploration data. The scientific research team has obtained rich scientific results through the study of first-hand scientific data independently obtained by my country.

Through a comprehensive study of typical landforms such as concave cones, barrier craters, and grooves distributed in the landing area, the important connection between the formation of the above landforms and water activity was revealed.

Figure 1: Impact craters, concave cones, grooves and ridges in the Zhurong landing area. (Provided by the National Space Administration)

Through camera images and spectral data, water-containing minerals were found in the plate-like crusty rocks near the landing area, proving that there was a large amount of liquid water activity in the landing area since 1 billion years ago (Late Amazonian period).

Figure 2: Zhurong discovered the plate-like hard-shelled rocks rich in hydrous minerals in the landing area and the schematic diagram of their formation process under the action of groundwater. (Provided by the National Space Administration)

Combining camera images and information such as the rover's movement tracks, it was found that the soil in the landing area has strong compressive strength and low friction parameters, and has characteristics related to water activity and has experienced wind and sand erosion.

Figure 3 Martian geological features and rocks in the Zhurong landing area. (Provided by the National Space Administration)

These new results reveal the impact of wind and sand and water activities on Mars' geological evolution and environmental changes, provide strong support for the conjecture that an ocean once existed on the Utopia Plain on Mars, and enrich human scientific understanding of Mars' geological evolution and environmental changes. The relevant results have been published in authoritative academic journals at home and abroad.

In addition, the scientific research team also used the Tianwen-1 exploration data to obtain a number of excellent scientific results in the relationship between the rock density on the Martian surface and the degree of surface erosion, the distribution of ions and neutral particles in the near-Mars space environment, and the Martian gravity field.

At present, the Tianwen-1 orbiter continues to carry out scientific exploration in the remote sensing mission orbit and continues to accumulate first-hand scientific data.