mars opportunity mission parts made in china

Zhurong landed in a large plain in Mars’ northern hemisphere called Utopia Planitia on May 15, 2021 – where NASA’s Viking 2 landertouched down in 1976.

The rover’s primary mission, which lasted for three months, was to search for signs of ancient life. It has investigated the minerals, environment and distribution of water and ice in the plain, which is all part of the largest impact basin in the Martian northern lowlands. The rover continues to explore its landing site and send information back to the Tianwen-1 orbiter circling the planet.

Data returned from the rover’s initial survey of the basin suggests that the Utopia Planitia basin contained water during a time when many scientists believed Mars to be dry and cold.

Mars was once warm and wet billions of years ago, but something changed and caused the planet to become the arid, frozen desert it is today. The red planet entered this period during what is called the Amazonian epoch, which began about 3 billion years ago and remains ongoing.

The researchers analyzed the Zhurong rover’s data about the sediments and minerals found in the basin as well as the analysis performed by several of the rover’s instruments of its surroundings. They found hydrated silica and sulfates, similar to hydrated minerals discoveredby other missions studying different regions of the red planet.

This adds to the increasing evidence discovered by Martian missions that the red planet went through cycles of being wet and warm, and dry and cold, rather than making one enduring, dramatic climate shift. These climatic ebbs and flows may have been the result of active volcanoes or impacts from other celestial objects, Yang said.

“So the discovery of hydrated minerals (has)significant indications on the geological and water history of the region and the climate evolution of Mars,” Yang said.

The findings also suggest that there could be “considerable stores” of water in the hydrated minerals or even ground ice, which future human explorers could use during crewed missions to Mars.

“One of the most important resources for human explorers is water,” Yang said. “Hydrated minerals, which contain structural water, and ground ice can be used as the important water resource on Mars.”

Two other spacecraft also made the trip from Earth to Mars during the last window when the two planets lined up, helping each of their countries achieve debuts in interplanetary exploration.

One country’s exploration is not a surprise. China is building a portfolio of impressive space missions, including robotic missions to the moon and a space station under construction in Earth orbit. In 2021, its Tianwen-1 mission arrived at Mars with three parts: an orbiter, a lander and a rover named Zhurong.

Months after the mission arrived in Mars orbit, the lander, carrying Zhurong, set down in the southern part of Utopia Planitia, a volcanic plain. That made China only the second country to pull off a lasting mission on the surface of the red planet. Chinese scientists are scheduled to present some of their early scientific results next month at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Woodlands, Texas.

In 2021, China earned a place in the Martian history books as it became the second nation to touch down on the Red planet. Now, the star of that mission, a rover called Zhurong, may be in trouble.

The rover, along with a lander, makes up China’s first interplanetary mission called Tiawen 1. After touching down on Utopia Planitia, a massive lava plain in Mars’ northern hemisphere, Zhurong conducted a host of science activities before it was scheduled to hibernate during the Martian winter.

Typically, spacecraft on Mars “sleep” through the winter in order to reserve power and help withstand the harsh winter conditions. Zhurong entered a dormant stage in May 2022, and was expected to wake up in December. However, the rover has failed to phone home.

Mars is a harsh and barren world, with an established track record of killing robots with its temperatures that reach well below freezing and frequent dust storms.

NASA’s Mars InSight lander, which was designed to study the planet’s interior, bid Earth farewell in December after a 4-year mission, as the dust layer on its solar panels grew thick enough that it could no longer harvest the energy it needed to operate.

NASA’s newest rovers — Curiosity and Perseverance — have managed to remain in operation thanks to their onboard nuclear power sources. Zhurong had tricks of its own to help it survive on Mars: self-cleaning solar arrays.

Both Spirit and Opportunity went through close calls like this during their respective missions. They would be slow to wake up, and just as NASA was ready to count them out, they’d wake up. The same could be true here. As the temperatures continue to warm up on Mars, the rover could build up its power sources.

China has successfully launched its first major interplanetary mission to Mars. The launch begins a long seven-month journey through deep space, and once the mission reaches the Red Planet, China could become just the second nation ever to land and operate a rover on the Martian surface.

Called Tianwen-1, China’s mission consists of a Martian orbiter, lander, and rover. The trio launched on top of the Long March 5 from China’s Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in the early morning hours of July 23rd. The Long March 5 is one of China’s most powerful rockets, and this mission marked just the fourth launch ever for this type of vehicle.

Once they reach the Red Planet, all three spacecraft will work in tandem to study the geology of Mars and learn more about what might be lurking underneath the planet’s surface. While the orbiter will map and image Mars from above, the lander and rover will eventually make the nightmarish plunge down to the surface of Mars. If they make it to the ground intact, the lander will act as a delivery platform, providing a ramp for the rover to roll away and traverse the Martian terrain.

Only the United States has been able to successfully land robotic spacecraft on Mars that can explore the surface. In fact, no other nation has had much success with landing anything on Mars. Europe has tried twice to land spacecraft on Mars, failing both times. The Soviet Union’s Mars 3 spacecraft did land in 1971 and communicated for about 20 seconds before going dark unexpectedly. If China’s landing is successful, it will have pulled off a feat that only NASA has mastered, elevating the nation into an elite tier of the global space community.

Tianwen-1 is actually the second mission headed to Mars this summer. The United Arab Emirates also launched its first interplanetary mission on July 19th, sending an orbiter called Hope to Mars that will study the planet’s weather. Next up is NASA, which is on track to launch its next Martian rover on July 30th. Called Perseverance, the rover is designed to look for signs of past life on Mars, as well as dig up samples of Martian dirt that may be returned to Earth one day for study.

NASA has had a string of recent successes with Mars missions, but don’t let that fool you—half of all missions to Mars end in failure. The Soviet Union previously landed a spacecraft on Mars in 1971, but communication was lost just 110 seconds later. As recently as 2017, the European Space Agency’s Schiaparelli lander crashed on its way to the Martian surface. China’s first attempt on Mars was actually as part of Russia’s 2011 Fobos-Grunt mission to explore Mars and its moon Phobos. That spacecraft failed to leave Earth’s orbit and ended up reentering Earth’s atmosphere months later, leading China to pursue its own independent mission to Mars.

Tianwen-1’s purpose is to use its 13 instruments (seven on the orbiter, six on the rover) to study the geology and soil mineralogy of Mars, map its water ice distribution, probe the electromagnetic and gravitational forces of the planet, and characterize its surface climate and environment. While the orbiter will observe and measure these things from a global perspective and snap images down to a two-meter resolution, Zhurong will home in on points of intrigue at the surface. It will use spectroscopy to find out what the soil is made of, measure magnetic fields on the ground, and track weather changes like temperature and winds.

Perhaps most intriguing is that Zhurong has a ground-penetrating radar that will let it peer into activity and structures underground 100 meters deep—10 times further than Perseverance’s radar. The hope is that this instrument will be able to detect potential reserves of water ice underground. Water resources could be a critical part of establishing a colony on Mars one day. Utopia Planitia in particular is “a relatively safe place to land and a possible place to find water,” says Wang.

China’s no stranger to extraterrestrial landings—the country’s lunar exploration program has seen three successful rover landings on the moon in less than 10 years. But that didn’t necessarily make it easier to get to Mars. The distance between the two planets creates an 18-minute time delay in communication. The whole landing process has to be accomplished automatically, without any possibility for ground control to manually intervene. The country’s never done that before. Now it knows it can.

Although the notion of two countries with rovers on the planet also raises the specter of a growing rivalry between the US and China, that may be an oversimplification. Zhurong is nowhere near where Curiosity or Perseverance are. Davis points out that the two countries actually coordinated the trajectories of their respective 2020 launches to ensure they wouldn’t crash into one another. “Mars is big,” he says. “Being able to operate multiple spacecraft there from multiple entities is possible. It’s not like they’re going to run into each other and cause problems.”

Instead, it’s possible the mission might actually open up more opportunities for scientific collaboration. NASA is currently barred from working with the Chinese space program, but the release of peer-reviewed research through the public press means there’s an opportunity to compare results from similar investigations conducted by each country’s rovers, such as subsurface radar data.

“From that perspective,” says Davis, “it’s very beneficial for space exploration to have multiple countries, multiple entities, doing this work. In terms of pure science, I’m very excited to see what the mission uncovers.”

BEIJING, Sept 2 (Reuters) - China has developed a prototype miniature helicopter for surveillance work on future Mars missions, according to its space science agency, following the historic landing of a robotic rover on the Red Planet a few months ago.

The prototype is similar in appearance to the robotic helicopter Ingenuity, developed by NASA for its Perseverance mission this year, according to a photograph posted on the website of China"s National Space Science Center on Wednesday.

China landed a Mars rover in May in its first-ever mission to the planet, becoming the second country after the United States to do so. NASA"s most advanced rover, Perseverance, landed on the planet in February. read more

HELSINKI — China has named its first independent interplanetary mission Tianwen-1, with the combined Mars orbiter and rover spacecraft apparently proceeding towards launch in July.

The name and mission logo were unveiled at a China National Space Administration online ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of the launch of the country’s first satellite. DFH-1 launched on a Long March 1 rocket from Jiuquan April 24, 1970, making China the fifth country to independently launch a satellite.

The ‘Lanxingjiutian’ logo includes representations of the Latin letter ‘c’, referring to China, cooperation, and the cosmic velocity required to undertake planetary exploration. Further Chinese planetary missions will also carry the Tianwen name.

China is understood to be planning a Mars sample return mission, a Jupiter orbiter and considering possible missions to icy giants andinterstellar space. A joint near-Earth asteroid sample return and comet rendezvous mission has also been proposed.

Few details of the Tianwen-1 mission have been released so far. The Tianwen-1 spacecraft is expected to have a wet mass of around 5 metric tons. Launch on a Long March 5 launcher is expected from Wenchang early in the short launch window to Mars open in late July and early August.

The test launch of theLong March 5B—currently expected in early May—will likely need to succeed for the Tianwen-1 mission to proceed. Following that mission, the Yuanwang-21 and -22 cargo vessels will collect the components of the Long March 5 for Tianwen-1 from Tianjin, north China, for delivery to Wenchang on the southern island of Hainan.

The Tianwen-1 orbiter will be equipped with a high-resolution camera comparable to HiRise on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It also carries a medium-resolution camera, subsurface radar, mineralogy spectrometer, neutral and energetic particle analyzers and a magnetometer. The orbiter will also play a relay role for the mission rover.

The roughly 240-kilogram solar-powered rover is nearly twice the mass of China’s Yutu lunar rovers. It will carry a ground-penetrating radar, multispectral camera, a Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy instrument and payloads for detecting the climate and magnetic environment. The rover has a mission design lifetime of three Earth months. The rover will receive a name through a public vote closer to launch.

China has outlined two landing areas, with acandidate landing sitein Utopia Planitia. The landing ellipse is understood to be around 100 x 40 kilometers. Site selection was driven by a range of factors including flight system engineering constraints and the challenges of entry, descent and landing (EDL) on the Red Planet, and the science goals of the mission.

The Tianwen-1 spacecraft is expected to reach Mars around February 2021. However, the rover landing attempt may not take place immediately. There are suggestions that the landing segment of the mission will be conducted months later, in April. This would allow mapping and observation of the landing site, despite the availability of high-resolution NASA imagery from HiRise.

The Tianwen-1 mission will join NASA’sPerseveranceMars 2020 rover and the United Arab Emirates’ Hope Mars orbiter, whichthis week shippedto its launch site in Japan, in launching during the July-August Mars launch window. ESA’s Rosalind Franklin ExoMars rover has been delayed to the next opportunity in 2022.

China"s space program took a major leap today when it successfully landed the Zhurong rover on Mars,marking the country’s first landing on another planet. Teams will now prepare to roll the rover off its landing platform and onto the dusty Martian surface to begin a mission to search for evidence of water and hints of past life.

The touchdown makes China the second country in history to deposit a rover on the surface of Mars. After months in orbit around the red planet, the Tianwen-1 spacecraft released the Zhurong rover for a landing in Utopia Planitia, a vast plain that may once have been covered by an ancient Martian ocean. The 529-pound rover survived a perilous descent to the surface, including atmospheric entry, slowing from supersonic speeds with a parachute, and finally using retrorockets to safely alight on the ground.

Named for an ancient Chinese fire god, the 529-pound Zhurong rover is similar in size to NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which landed on the red planet in 2004 and sent back exciting images and data about the planet’s surface conditions. China’s rover could make additional important discoveries concerning water and past habitability on the planet, paving the way for future human missions to Mars.

“Landing safely on Mars is a huge challenge, especially for China"s first soft landing attempt,” Long Xiao, a planetary scientist at the China University of Geosciences, said before the safe touchdown. “But it is a necessary step for Mars and deep-space exploration.”

Successfully descending to the surface of Mars is an extraordinary challenge. Before today, only NASA had safely landed and operated spacecraft on the Martian surface; in 1971, the Soviet Mars 3 lander transmitted half of a photo before falling silent about 100 seconds into the mission. By landing and roving on Mars, China jumps ahead of a number of spacefaring peers.

The Zhurong rover made it through the so-called “seven minutes of terror,” the time from atmospheric entry to landing on the surface. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) could only watch the autonomous landing unfold from nearly 200 million miles away—so far away that it takes 18 minutes to receive a signal from Mars—and hope everything went to plan.

Mars is significantly harder to land on than the moon, says Michel Blanc at the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology in France. But China has had a series of successful lunar missions that prepared it for a Mars landing. Chang’e-4, history’s first landing on the lunar far side in 2019, required “high technological capacity” in artificial intelligence and autonomous hazard avoidance, Blanc notes. As well, the rocket engines on Zhurong are similar to those China used to safely land three spacecraft on the moon.

Once Zhurong’s six wheels roll off the landing platform and onto the Martian dust, the rover will expand its foldable, butterfly-like solar panels and explore the area for a primary mission lasting three months. The vehicle could work well beyond this conservative goal however—the solar-powered Spirit and Opportunity rovers had primary missions of about 90 days, and they each ended up exploring Mars for years.

Utopia Planitia, thought to be the site of an ancient sea, has sedimentary layers that could contain evidence of past water. Even more exciting, these layers of rock could contain traces of any past life on Mars, says James Head III, a planetary scientist at Brown University.

“Because the pre-selected landing site is close to an ancient ocean shoreline, and distinct from others, the science data will uncover more secrets of Mars,” Long says. The site complements the research being carried out by NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers in the ancient lakes of Gale and Jezero craters, respectively, Head adds.

The Zhurong rover carries a suite of six instruments. A pair of panoramic cameras and a multispectral imager will provide information about the terrain and its composition, while an instrument with a laser will vaporize rocks to analyze their makeup, similar to the laser spectrometers aboard Curiosity and Perseverance. A magnetometer will measure magnetic fields in tandem with an instrument on the orbiter, and a climate station will measure the local atmosphere, temperature, pressure, wind, and sound on Mars.

One of the most exciting instruments aboard the rover, however, is a ground-penetrating radar, which will be used to search for pockets of water or ice below the surface. Head notes that NASA’s Viking 2 lander, which set down in a region slightly north of Zhurong’s landing site in 1975, imaged fascinating phenomena, including ice contractions and frosts on the surface of Mars, and polygon patterned terrain which may have been created by contractions of subsurface ice with changing seasons.

“Tianwen-1 is likely to be able to explore and detect any subsurface snow and ice using its payload,” Head says. Such pockets of ice could prove valuable for future crewed missions, and any pockets of water or brine, shielded from radiation on the surface, may provide habitats for simple lifeforms.

China will openly share the data from Tianwen-1 and Zhurong the same way it has shared data from its lunar exploration missions, Long says, benefiting planetary scientists around the world.

The mission will also set the stage for China’s next planned voyage to Mars—an audacious sample-return attempt scheduled to launch around 2028. Beyond Mars, the country has plans to launch a Jupiter probe, including a possible landing on the moon Callisto, to collect samples from a near-Earth asteroid, and to send a pair of Voyager-like spacecraft toward the edges of the solar system.

“In the age of ocean exploration, China has a history of Zheng He"s voyages to Southeast Asia and Africa,” says Zhang Xiaoping, associate professor at the State Key Laboratory of Lunar and Planetary Sciences of the Macau University of Science and Technology, referring to early 15th-century expeditions. Zhang views China’s Mars mission as a continuation of these Ming Dynasty journeys.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect the successful landing of China’s Zhurong rover on Mars. Also, the image of China"s Chang"e-3 lander and rover has been cropped to remove a background image of Earth, which was not in the original mission photos.

China’s Zhurong rover has peered deep under the surface of Mars, finding evidence of two major floods that probably shaped the region the robot has been exploring since it landed in May 2021.

Have the Chinese joined any international group that would indicate they would share their findings on Mars with the world?Yes. The World Health Organization.

Don’t trust Chinese, they’ve been hacking data from NASA in order to send their rover to Mars,hence why it never took them 10years ,Is the technology of the United States so poor? Americans even stole Indian homes

It only makes perfect sense that the Chinese could achieve a feat like landing a rover by having much better technology than we had a decade ago. I am sure they observed and learned from NASA’s successes and failures. My dream as a boy, and still is, to colonize Mars. Observing rover’s findings will probably be as close as I get, hahaha. I am Amazed with all of this.

I’m glad to see my opinion is already in the comments. There was a less than 1% chance of failure when the US landed perseverance on Mars. NASA didn’t steal the technology either. They pioneered it.Dident we steal all ours from Nazis….

With all the stolen technology of course they won’t take decades to do it. 50 years ago nasa was on the moon. China was back water peasant farmers. In 50 years they get to Mars by stealing from American companys through hacking or posing as “humble students” just wanting to learn. Most dishonorable government on the planet. In Mao they trust.Please don’t just say what others say. You keep saying that China has stolen American technology. Then I would like to ask you, what technology did they stole? Do you have evidence? Stop being brainwashed by the American media!

Lots of people talking about stolen tech whilst conviently forgetting how rocket tech was acquired in the first place. operation paperclip anybody.Paperclip stole nothing. And it’s not like the US didn’t already know how to build rockets, Von Braun by his own admission built on the work of Robert Goddard.Yes Not very good ones. Without the acquired knowledge Apollo probably would not have happened or not within the impressive timescales. In essence it’s the same thing. The knowledge was not homegrown it was acquired externally period.

Congratulations to my classmates, who spent the last decade on these efforts. While I published 200 useless papers in the US as a university professor, your dream already flourish on Mars. I was wrong, you were right! I am sure you will achieve something greater and I should cheer for you!

Don’t send the Coronavirus to Mars and mess up that planet up like you did Earth.Impossible. Mars does not exist. And neither does the fake virus. I am sure you saw lots of your neighbors falling over in the streets and ambulances all over the place. Chaos 24 hours a day everywhere you went. It was horrible. All those over filled hospitals with ambulances and sirens constantly going. Yea only on the MSM/News But you believe it. Cause you saw it on the news

One problem with NASA is it’s focus is not any longer on space and more focused on funding programs they can stretch out for 15 years to keep everyone getting a paycheck in ever growing pet programs that forward nothing towards space itself. It’s going to take them the next 20 years to go pick up samples from Mars. 1/3 the lifespan of a persons life to go get samples back from Mars. In my lifetime there hasn’t been any manned missions to the moon again and I’ll be lucky to see it happen, if it ever does. The snail pace NASA works in now is completely unacceptable and lazy. Everything they do is grossly over budget and years over the projected completion dates.

So you praise the Communists for landing a rover on Mars while at the same time putting down the USA. They are worthy of praise. They have taken millions of our jobs, manipulated their currency to gain unfair trade advantages, and set loose a virus that took millions of lives and Trillions of Dollars. Not to mention despicable acts genocide. Three cheers for China. At leat their writers have the backbones ours don’t.Do you beleive everthing you are fed?

Why anyone would be excited for a communist dictatorship that can’t even control booster rockets falling down on top of is, landing on Mars is mindboggling ignorant of the dangers that poses to Western democracies.

They won’t do this on any other planet than mars cause the CGI technology just isn’t good enough yet…..still pretty easy to just change shades from brown/green to red. Bahahahahahaha One of you said those who think this is fake need mental help. Well I think anyone who can just have faith in a picture needs mental help. You wanna believe this stuff is real…go ahead. I don’t. My beliefs and yours make no difference.Thank you. Somebody who is awake. And some common sense

HOME FIRST. Why is there such a interest in Mars and Moon rocks. We got a real bad situation going on on this planet. Human trafficking is real. Turn a blind eye all you want…doesn’t mean it isn’t real.F**ks like YOU would have us still living without indoor plumbing!Dummy’s like you beleive in outer space…Spinning marble hurdling through infinite nothing..lmbo fairytale much

The US and now China are the only TWO nations to SUCCESSFUL land rovers on Mars. Europeans and Russians have yet to have a successful mission to the surface though the Russians did have the first landing in one piece that failed to work.Kudos to Europe and Russia for not stealing American technology. Do you not realize China literally copied and pasted everything NASA created?

The author missed to indicate the fact that it was NASA’s data that paved way for the quicker arrival of Zhurong in Mars. While I am not against China here but give credits to what its due. NASA had carefully spent time to study the planet considering it was a first which is why it took longer.

China, lmao. That’s pretty much a Nasa mission under the communist thieving hands. America is way to soft on the Chinese communists. The only originality in Chinese culture is the food.

Its easy to say it took NASA decades to accomplish what China has just done on mars. NASA probably did all the research and grunt work only to have China steal or buy NASA’S Work.

No doubt great catch up 50 years after the Americans landed on Mars.They had the advantage of 50 yrs of scientific advancement and copying from others as usual.I hope they would share the new findings but I doubt it. Never the less Congratulations on

Ever wondered why China doesn’t have a self landing rocket? and is actually rapidly falling behind in space(no StarLink, no manned mission to Mars, no man on the moon before the US returns for a second time)? Its because the US has got a lot better at protecting its IP

What a poor comparison. China did I’m one go? You mean on the backs of all the knowledge that’s been shared from the successes and failures of every NASA mission before it. I doubt china would have been successful if they had to start where NASA did

Aa a media you have to stop making silly headlines. You cannot compare all the work done by NASA all these years. China has a reputation of stealing data / designs / engineering know hows and whatever they can lay their hands on. Naturally they can land faster than NASA. Ever wonder why their Mars vehicle looks very similar to Mars Rover by NASA

Regardless of whether or not China “stole” American IP (which seems likely given their history), the article title is disingenuous at best. Simple observation of what NASA has done over the last 60 years would provide a basic framework for how to conduct a mission to Mars, and they could do it using modern technology not available to NASA decades ago.

More like China is decades behind the US. US put men on the moon with 1960s technology,. Put solar system surveyors into interstellar space with 1970s tech,. Launched reusable spacecraft with 1980s tech. Put rovers on Mars with 1990 tech. Put in a deep space satalite network around Mars with 2000 tech, skycraned a one ton rover on to Mars with 2010 tech and flew a helicopter on Mars with 2020 tech.

They conveniently fail to acknowledge that their feats are built on the backs of all of the NASA and ESA missions that came before. It’s notable that their advanced aircraft and other technology looks just like the things we built a decade or more before their “wonder planes”.

Of course they can do all this on one mission . We spent billions $$ and years developing the technology . They steal it and they claim the glory . Once again communist countries being themselves THIEFS CROOKS BACK STABBERS . They cheat at everything sports science politics etc . I do my best to avoid buying anything made from there .Please go back to translate your articles and throw away all the things printed with “made in China”! Including your clothes and shoes

Again all here need to realize China doesn’t care about the West and their intellectual property or any of their achievements. It save’s China money and time to steal others information its economically as and example the designs of U.S fighter jets but China has not been able steal the engine technology thus lag behind on the design. This also goes for the Mars Rover technology this article is a joke.

This is what one expects from communists. Since the communist citizenry are all on equal pay scales, you cannot get a chinese communist to think outside the box. Why would one do so when you won’t get rewarded for exceptualism. (Pretty much what THE LEFT is doing in this country). Thus the communist chinese have to steal intellectual property from exceptional countries like us”The United States of America”. The communist chinese are cheaters, thieves, liars, rogues, demagogues, deceivers, back stabbers, manipulators and down right rat bastards…..similar to the communist russians during the cold war. Xi JinPing needs that smirk wiped off his face. NO GOLD STARS EARNED FOR THIS MISSION.

To think we have not moved on to the next-generation of flight propulsion since 1967 is Crazy..next time you see a UFO take a good close look ..U may see an American flag on it…we have been retro engineering crashes crafts for 60 years….all these rocket launches are for the public…they get to Mars in 3 days now. They just don’t tell us.

For the past 20 years, the only sign of activity on Mars was a succession of NASA-built rovers slowly rolling across the barren desert landscape. Today, only one of these rovers—Curiosity—is still operational. But in just a few months it will have some new wheeled visitors. One of them is Curiosity’s descendant. It’s called Perseverance, and NASA is sending it on a mission to collect samples of Martian dirt that might have signs of life. It will be the largest and most autonomous robot that has ever landed on the surface of another planet.

The other newcomer will be Tianwen-1, an orbiter-lander-rover combo built by China. The rover is dwarfed by Perseverance, but it still qualifies as one of the most complex machines ever built. If China successfully deploys a rover on Mars, it will become only the second country in history to pull this off. Other than the US, the only nation to even try it was the Soviet Union, and it failed—twice. Mars is an incredibly challenging target, and for China, Tianwen-1 is a message to the rest of the world that it’s no longer merely a participant in space exploration; now it’s a leader.

On Thursday, a Chinese Long March 5 rocket is expected to boost Tianwen-1 on a six-month mission to the Red Planet. (The Chinese government has been tight-lipped about exactly when the mission will depart, but the launch window extends until mid-August.) The Tianwen probe is actually three spacecraft rolled up into one: It consists of a rover, a lander, and an orbiter. The rover is stored in the belly of the lander, and about two months after the probe arrives in Mars orbit, the lander will separate from the orbiter and make its way to the surface. The orbiter will spend at least a year keeping tabs on the lander from above and relaying the data it collects back to Earth, while also doing some science of its own.

Chinese scientists haven’t announced the rover’s landing site yet, but a leading candidate is Utopia Planitia, a plain located in the largest impact crater on the planet. (This was also the destination of NASA’s second Mars lander, Viking 2.) Once the rover is deployed, it will spend at least three months studying the Martian environment. The China National Space Administration has released few specifics about the rover or the types of experiments it will be doing, but a paper published in Nature Astronomy this month by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences says the goal of the mission is to “perform a global and extensive survey of the entire planet.”

The rover has an array of solar panels fanning out from its circular body that will be used to power its communication systems and six onboard instruments. In addition to two cameras, the rover will carry a radar for exploring beneath the surface, an instrument for detecting Mars’ weak magnetic field, an instrument to measure the chemistry of Martian soil, and another instrument to monitor Mars’ weather. Although the rover will be limited to a few hundred meters around its landing site, the orbiter will be able to collect more comprehensive data about the planet.

China has released the first photographs taken by its Zhurong rover, which touched down on Mars late on Friday (May 14) as part of the country"s Tianwen-1 mission.

The China National Space Administration (CNSA), which runs the mission, has released two Mars photographs taken by the rover: one in color and one in black and white. Both images show parts of the rover and its lander against a backdrop of Utopia Planitia, the expansive northern plain that Zhurong will explore during its mission.

The color image shows a view looking to the rear of Zhurong from a navigation camera above the rover"s main deck. Solar arrays are visible, as are some surface rocks and features. The black and white image is from an obstacle avoidance camera at the front of the rover. It was captured with a wide-angle lens that also revealed a view of the Mars horizon in the distance, as well as two subsurface radar instruments on the rover itself.

China"s successful Mars landing made the country only the second nation to successfully soft-land on Mars, joining the United States. The Soviet Union and the European Space Agency have also sent missions to the Red Planet"s surface, but those landings have not been successful. Zhurong"s arrival brings the active Mars rover tally to three, joining NASA"s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers.

The landing comes as part of China"s Tianwen-1 mission, which was also the nation"s first successful Mars orbiter; China was the sixth entity to notch that accomplishment in February. Tianwen-1 translates to "Heavenly Questions"; the name Zhurong honors an ancient Chinese fire god.

Both rovers exceeded their planned 90-day mission lifetimes by many years. Spirit lasted 20 times longer than its original design until it concluded its mission in 2010. Opportunity has worked on Mars longer than any other robot—nearly 15 years. The rover last communicated with Earth on June 10, 2018, as a planet-wide dust storm blanketed the solar-powered rover’s location on Mars. In 2015, Opportunity broke the record for extraterrestrial travel by driving more than the distance of a marathon, with a total of 28.06 miles (45.16 kilometers).

First among the mission"s scientific goals was to search for and characterize a wide range of rocks and soils for clues to past water activity on Mars. The rovers were targeted to sites on opposite sides of Mars that looked like they were affected by liquid water in the past. Opportunity landed at Meridiani Planum, a possible former lake in a giant impact crater. Spirit landed at Gusev Crater, a place where mineral deposits suggested that Mars had a wet history.

Each rover bounced onto the surface inside a landing craft protected by airbags. When they stopped rolling, the airbags were deflated and the landing craft opened. The rovers rolled out to take panoramic images. These images gave scientists the information they needed to select promising geological targets to tell part of the story of water in Mars" past. Then, the rovers drove to those locations and beyond to perform close-up scientific investigations.

And given its impressive track record as of late — China became the second country to land a rover on Mars, back in 2020 — the Chinese space program stands a good chance of doing just that, leaving other spacefaring countries like the US and Russia in the dust.

According to a recent presentation by Sun Zezhou, chief designer of the country"s Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter and rover mission, China is hoping to kick off a Mars sample return mission called Tianwen-3 in late 2028, returning samples by July 2031 — two years before NASA"s joint mission with the European Space Agency (ESO), according to SpaceNews.

While NASA and the ESA were also initially hoping to bring back samples by July 2031, in an ambitious mission with a lot of moving parts including NASA"s Perseverance rover, the ESA"s Earth Return Orbiter is now unlikely to make it back to Earth until at least 2033, according to recent revisions.

China"s Tianwen-3 mission will be slightly less ambitious than those efforts. First, the country"s Long March super heavy rockets will send a lander and ascent vehicle to Mars, with the former sampling the local soil and returning back to Earth with the help of the latter.

The country is also building on a wealth of experience, having already sent a spacecraft called Tianwen-1 into Martian orbit, landed a rover called Zhurong on the surface of the Red Planet, and successfully retrieved lunar samples with its Chang"e-5 mission.

A Mars rover is a motor vehicle designed to travel on the surface of Mars. Rovers have several advantages over stationary landers: they examine more territory, they can be directed to interesting features, they can place themselves in sunny positions to weather winter months, and they can advance the knowledge of how to perform very remote robotic vehicle control. They serve a different purpose than orbital spacecraft like Mars helicopter.

On January 24, 2016, NASA reported that then current studies on Mars by Opportunity and Curiosity would be searching for evidence of ancient life, including a biosphere based on autotrophic, chemotrophic or chemolithoautotrophic microorganisms, as well as ancient water, including fluvio-lacustrine environments (plains related to ancient rivers or lakes) that may have been habitable.habitability, taphonomy (related to fossils), and organic carbon on Mars is now a primary NASA objective.

The Soviet probes, Mars 2 and Mars 3, were physically tethered probes; Sojourner was dependent on the Mars Pathfinder base station for communication with Earth; Opportunity, Spirit and Curiosity were on their own. As of February 2023, Curiosity is still active, while Spirit, Opportunity, and Sojourner completed their missions before losing contact. On February 18, 2021, Perseverance, the newest American Mars rover, successfully landed. On May 14, 2021, China"s Zhurong became the first non-American rover to successfully operate on Mars.

NASA distinguishes between "mission" objectives and "science" objectives. Mission objectives are related to progress in space technology and development processes. Science objectives are met by the instruments during their mission in space.

The science instruments are chosen and designed based on the science objectives and goals. The primary goal of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers was to investigate "the history of water on Mars".

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After successfully putting the "Jade Rabbit" lunar rover on the moon, Chinese space experts say the country"s planned Mars vehicle will be larger, tougher and a better climber.

On Tuesday, a real-sized model of the Mars rover is on display at the Airshow China 2014 in south China"s Zhuhai City, offering a rare glimpse of the spacecraft still being designed.

"Yutu can climb over obstacles no higher than 20-centimeters, but has to bypass larger rocks. This will not work on Mars, where places are full of large rocks like those in the Gobi Desert. So we must improve its adaptability to complex territory," he says.

China has not announced an official plan for a Mars probe, but Ouyang Ziyuan, a leading scientist in China"s moon probe mission, has said China plans to land a Mars rover around 2020, collect samples and bring them back around 2030.

Jia expects the Mars buggy to be solar-powered, its weight close to NASA"s Spirit and Opportunity rovers at about 180 kg. NASA"s latest Curiosity rover weighs 900 kg and is powered by nuclear battery, but Jia says the capability of China"s carrier rockets limits the size of its Mars rover.

Yutu reported a mechanical malfunction during the second lunar day after its successful landing in December last year, prompting Chinese experts to stress the fault response on the Mars rover.

"The Mars environment is more complicated and adverse than that of the moon. We"re working to overcome the worst scenario - dust storms that will significantly lower the energy output of the solar battery," Jia says.

Displayed with the rover is a model of a capsule designed to carry the vehicle into the planet"s atmosphere. Jia says they are still working on the capsule"s parachute and heat-proof structure that will enable it to land in the extremely thin air, one of the hardest parts of the Mars mission.

Chinese scientists have eyed the Red Planet as the next destination after a successful soft landing on the moon late last year. Calls for speeding up China"s own Mars mission mounted after India"s probe reached the planet"s orbit in September, following similar success by the United States and Europe.

China made one unsuccessful attempt to reach Mars in 2011, when a China-made probe boarded a Russian rocket to Mars but failed to complete the mission because of an accident in the orbital transfer.

The distance between Mars and Earth ranges between 50 million and 400 million kilometers, compared with 380,000 kilometers between the moon and Earth, but Li says China has powerful rockets and interstellar communication and control technologies for making the travel possible.

China"s success in lunar landing has honed its landing technologies, though landing and survival of the rover remains the most difficult part of the mission, according to Li.