THE orbiter and rover of China’s Tianwen-1 probe have both completed the targeted scientific exploration missions, announced the China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Wednesday.

As of Wednesday, the orbiter of Tianwen-1 has been operating normally for 706 days. It has acquired the medium-resolution image data covering the whole globe of Mars, with all of its scientific payloads realizing global survey, said the CNSA.

By now, the orbiter has circled Mars 1,344 times. For future missions, it will continue to conduct the whole-globe remote sensing survey and expand tech experiments, said the CNSA.

The Tianwen-1 probe consists of an orbiter, a lander and a rover Zhurong. On May 15, 2021, it touched down at its pre-selected landing area in Utopia Planitia, a vast Martian plain, marking the first time that China has landed a probe on the planet.

The rover Zhurong started patrolling Mars on May 22, 2021. As of Aug. 15, 2021, Zhurong had finished the designed 90-Martian-day mission.

After two years of flight and exploration, the rover and orbiter have acquired 1,040 gigabytes of raw scientific data with their 13 onboard scientific payloads. (Xinhua)