Selfies on Mars
D. Indumathi, The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai

The Tianwen-1 is a Chinese mission to send a to send a robotic spacecraft to Mars. Its name means "Heavenly Questions."
The spacecraft, with a total mass of nearly five tons, is one of the heaviest probes launched to Mars and carries 13 scientific instruments. It is the first in a series of missions for planetary exploration by China. It also includes a lander to actually land on the Martian surface.
Launched on 23 July 2020, it spent seven months through the inner Solar System before it spacecraft entered into orbit around Mars on 10 February 2021. For the next three months the probe studied various possible landing sites on Mars. Finally, on 14 May 2021, the lander/rover portion of the mission successfully touched down in the Utopia Planitia region on Mars. This made China the third nation to both land softly on and establish communication from the Martian surface, after the Soviet Union and the United States.
After the lander landed, the Zhurong rover descended from the landing platform and drove on the Martian surface. The most interesting thing about the rover is its "drop camera" which photographed both the rover itself as well as the Tianwen-1 lander! The less than 1 kg camera is today the lightest artificial object on Mars. 
The rover is (like others) powered by solar panels. It will probe the soil composition and search for biomolecules and signs of life. It will also study the climate and atmosphere of Mars.

The cameras
A small camera with wide-angle lenses on both sides was ejected from the outside of the spacecraft. It took one image every second and sent the data to Tianmen-1, which then transmitted the images back to Earth. Just think of it. The camera was "aimed" at the probe by a human on Earh 25 million km away!
The camera took a photo of the Tianwen-1 probe itself; see photo. The black background is the colour of deep space. While the camera was falling away into space, Tianwen-1 in turn took images of the camera as it tumbled away! Tianwen-1 also took many photos of Mars as it approached.
The Zhurong rover has started wheeling its way around Mars since May. It also placed a small wireless camera on the Martian surface and stood next to its landing platform and took a "selfie-picture" of the two of them! It has also taken a picture of the landing platform. You can see the ramp down which the rover drove down to reach the land. The Chinese flag is visible as the "square" in front. 
Zhurong is expected to keep exploring for about 90 days, and it will capture more images while it analyzes the Martian climate and geology. The place Utopia Planitia where Zhurong landed is a smooth plain where NASA's Viking-2 landed in 1976. At present, the US rover called Perseverance is also on Mars, but it is at the Jezero crater, more than 1500 km away from Zhurong. NASA's Curiosity rover (which landed on Mars in 2012) is currently climbing up Mont Mercou after 9 years on Mars!
You may ask, how many vehicles are wandering about on Mars? As of August 2021, there have been six successful robotically operated Mars rovers, the first five managed by the American NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Sojourner (1997), Opportunity (2004), Spirit (2004), Curiosity (2012), and Perseverance (2021). The sixth is Zhurong (2021), managed by the China National Space Administration. Their landing sites are seen in the figure. While InSight is a lander (landed 2018), Ingenuity is a helicopter that was sent along with Perseverance. The Curiosity, Perseverance and Zhurong rovers, as well as Insight and Ingenuity are all currently active and sending data back to earth.

You can see Curiosity as well as Perseverance (with the Ingenuity on the left) in the images below.

All pictures courtesy CNSA, China