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China’s Mars Rover Returns First Pictures And Preps to Roll Down

Laura Luo
May 24, 2021
China’s Mars rover returns first pictures and preps to roll down
Image credit: CCTV/CNSA

China has released the first photographs taken by its rover on Mars, which has just landed less than a week ago, making China the second nation after the U.S to successfully soft-land on Mars.

The China National Space Administration which oversees the space mission has released two images of the Zhurong rover Thursday, with the forward view shows the landscape ahead of the rover as it sits on its landing platform, and the rear-looking image reveals its solar panels. Zhurong is named after Ancient China’s fire god,

Both images show a glimpse of the surrounding environment where the rover landed — Utopia Planitia — which is a volcanic region in Mars’ northern hemisphere. It’s a colossal basin – more than 3,000km across – that is believed to be formed by an impact early in Mars’ history. NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers also landed close to this region.

Zhurong’s landing site in the Utopia Planitia is close to the boundary between Mars’s northern lowlands and southern highlands, which might have been the shoreline for an ancient ocean that once covered the planet’s north. Remote sensing by satellites also indicates there are significant stores of ice at depth.

Scientists has planned for Zhurong to operate for at least three months to study local geology and climate, with mud volcanoes, sand dunes and impact craters, subsurface ice being of particular interest. The six-wheeled rover carries six instruments, including a laser tool to zap rocks to assess their chemistry and a radar to look for sub-surface water-ice.

Zhurong weighs some 240kg and is powered by fold-out solar panels. It can move at speeds of 200 metres per hour. After the CNSA team check that Zhurong’s instruments are all functioning well, it will drive down a ramp off the lander, and touch the surface of Mars. The expected time to do so is this Friday or Saturday.

China’s successful touch down on Mars was a remarkable achievement, given the difficult nature of the task. China is only the second nation after the U.S to successfully soft-land on Mars. The Soviet Union and the European Space Agency have also sent missions to Mars, but have either crashed or lost contact soon after reaching the surface. Zhurong’s arrival brings the active Mars rover tally to three, joining NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers.

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