China’s first Mars orbiter, Tianwen-1, is exhibiting off its journey across the Purple Planet in a newly launched selfie video forward of the Chinese language Lunar New Yr. The temporary clip, launched Monday by the China Nationwide Area Administration, reveals a superb portion of the spacecraft’s physique, engines, and photo voltaic array zooming by means of area, with parts of Mars’ floor showing within the background.

The Tianwen-1 orbiter has been circling Mars for almost a yr now. After launching from China in July of 2020, the car inserted itself into the planet’s orbit in February of 2021. The spacecraft is China’s first mission to efficiently attain the Purple Planet’s orbit, making the nation one in all only a handful of nations to discover Mars robotically. Tianwen-1 got here to Mars bundled along with a lander and a rover, each of which efficiently landed on the planet’s floor in Might of final yr.

Usually, China is pretty opaque on the subject of its spaceflight missions, releasing solely restricted details about launches and its spacecraft. However the nation has launched some attractive photos of the Tianwen-1 mission lately. This isn’t even Tianwen-1’s first selfie. In early January, the orbiter launched a small spacecraft with a digital camera onboard, which snapped photos of Tianwen-1 with a really massive Mars within the background. Tianwen-1 additionally captured an image of itself throughout its transit to Mars by releasing one other spacecraft with a digital camera on it that captured the car encased in its protecting shell. This latest video was taken by a digital camera connected to Tianwen-1.

Spacecraft selfies have been a pleasant side of area missions baked into autos for many years. NASA’s numerous Mars rovers, together with Curiosity and Perseverance, have created stunning selfie mosaics of themselves and the Martian panorama. China’s rover additionally snapped an image of itself on the Martian floor after its touchdown final yr. Moreover, when NASA landed its Perception lander on Mars, the area company despatched two small satellites that rode together with the car, one in all which additionally captured a selfie of itself whereas in area with Mars within the background.