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Solar panel “wings” spread out and two camera “eyes” pointing ahead, China’s Mars rover Zhurong struck a birdlike pose as it explored the red planet in photos released by the country’s space agency Friday.

Zhurong’s touchdown in May was the first ever successful probe landing by any country on its first Mars mission — a milestone in China’s ascent to space superpower status.

The rover, named after a mythical Chinese fire god, has since been studying the topography of a vast Martian lava plain known as the Utopia Planitia.

Photos published by the China National Space Administration showed tracks in the red soil left by Zhurong, which the agency described as “China’s imprint”, after it drove onto the planet’s surface form a landing platform adorned with a large Chinese flag.

The six-wheeled, solar-powered, 240-kilogramme (530-pound) Zhurong is expected to spend three months taking photos, harvesting geographical data, and collecting rock samples.

The space agency said on Friday that the Mars mission’s “engineering tasks were carried out smoothly as planned,” and that the equipment were currently “in good condition.”

China has now sent astronauts into space, powered probes to the Moon and landed a rover on Mars — one of 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.

Several US, Russian and European attempts to land rovers on Mars have failed in the past, most recently in 2016 with the crash-landing of the Schiaparelli joint Russian-European spacecraft.

The latest successful arrival came in February, when US space agency NASA landed its rover Perseverance, which has since been exploring the planet.


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Scientists Propose Space Missions to Chase Down Interstellar Comets

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A Southwest Research Institute study reveals that chasing interstellar comets like 3I/ATLAS is achievable with current rockets and instruments. Such missions could collect data on comet nuclei and comae, providing clues to the formation of other star systems. International collaborations make these rare, high-value missions increasingly realistic.

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Iceland Plume Discovery Reveals Ancient Volcanic Funnels Across North Atlantic

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Sixty million years ago, Iceland’s deep plume fueled massive eruptions across the North Atlantic. Cambridge scientists discovered hidden weak zones in Earth’s crust that funneled the plume’s heat, explaining volcanic fields like the Giant’s Causeway. These ancient scars still shape today’s earthquakes and geothermal energy across Britain and Ireland.

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Astronomers Discover Rogue Black Hole Racing Through a Distant Dwarf Galaxy

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Astronomers have discovered a rogue intermediate-mass black hole speeding through a dwarf galaxy 230 million light-years away. Unlike typical galactic centres, this displaced object is accreting material and blasting out jets, suggesting black holes can grow “offsite”. The finding offers rare evidence of elusive intermediate black holes and may help explain how su…

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