China’s Mars rover drove from its landing platform and began exploring the surface on Saturday, making the country only the second nation to land and operate a rover on the Red Planet.
The launch last July of the Tianwen-1 Mars probe, which carried the Zhurong rover, marked a major milestone in China’s space programme.
Tianwen-1 touched down on a vast northern lava plain known as the Utopia Planitia a week ago and beamed back its first photos of the surface a few days later.
The Mars probe and rover are expected to spend around three months taking photos, harvesting geographical data, and collecting and analysing rock samples.
The six-wheeled, solar-powered, 240-kilogramme (530-pound) Zhurong is named after a Chinese mythical fire god.
China has now sent astronauts into space, powered probes to the Moon and landed a rover on Mars — the most prestigious of all prizes in the competition for dominion of space.
The United States and Russia are the only other countries to have reached Mars, and only the former has operated a rover on the surface.
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