The China National Space Administration on Wednesday released a breathtaking image captured by the Tianwen-2 probe, showing the spacecraft and Earth framed together in a celestial selfie.
The image, which coincided with China’s National Day celebrations, features the country’s Five-Starred Red Flag fluttering in space alongside the white return capsule, and the distant blue Earth in the backdrop.
This beautiful composition was obtained by a monitoring camera mounted on the probe’s robotic arm.
China launched Tianwen-2, its first asteroid sample-return mission, on May 29.
It is designed to carry out a series of tasks in one go: exploring the near-Earth asteroid 2016HO3 and returning samples collected from it, and conducting scientific research of the main-belt comet 311P, which is more distant than Mars.
Currently, the Tianwen-2 probe has been in orbit for 125 days, during which it successfully completed various tests, including the sampling equipment deployment and electronic equipment self-checks. All systems are in normal operation. Its onboard instruments have also started gathering valuable scientific data about the space environment.
At present, the spacecraft is approximately 43 million kilometers from Earth and 45 million kilometers from the asteroid 2016HO3, operating smoothly in orbit.
