BEIJING, July 1 (Xinhua) — The China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Tuesday released images of Earth and the moon captured by the Tianwen-2 probe in orbit.
The CNSA said that the narrow-field-of-view navigation sensor equipped on the probe recently captured the images of Earth and the moon, demonstrating good functional performance.
The images released include a photograph of Earth obtained by Tianwen-2 when it was approximately 590,000 kilometers away from the planet, as well as a new photograph of the moon captured when it was about the same distance from the moon. After the images were transmitted back to the ground, they were processed and produced by scientific researchers.
The Tianwen-2 probe has currently been in orbit for over 33 days, at a distance from Earth exceeding 12 million kilometers, and it is in good working condition, the CNSA said.
China launched its first asteroid sample-return mission, Tianwen-2, on May 29 — an endeavour to shed light on the formation and evolution of asteroids and the early solar system.
The mission aims to achieve multiple goals over a decade-long expedition: collecting samples from near-Earth asteroid 2016HO3 and exploring main-belt comet 311P, which is farther from Earth than Mars. ■