Zhurong Lander/Rover, Surface Operations at Utopia Planitia Options

[Phil Stooke]

No news yet but some time in the coming weeks we might see Zhurong operate again after its winter break, if it survived the cold season.

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

Spoke too soon. Here is a bit of news:

https://moon.bao.ac.cn/web/enmanager/dtxw?detailId=821602

(in Chinese, but here is a Google translation):

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On May 15, 2021 , Tianwen-1 successfully landed in the southern part of the Utopia Plain of Mars, leaving China's mark on Mars for the first time. As the first mission of China's planetary exploration project, Tianwen-1 has realized China's space exploration from the Earth-Moon system to the The interplanetary leap, the first time in the world to complete the orbiting, landing, and patrolling of Mars through a single mission, is another milestone in the development of China's aerospace industry. At present, Tianwen-1 has landed on Mars for more than a year, and the "Zhurong" rover and orbiter have carried out various scientific explorations as planned and are in good condition.

At present, the Mars rover inspection area has entered winter. The highest temperature during the day is below minus 20°C, and the minimum temperature at night is down to minus 100°C. By mid-July, around the Martian solstice, the temperature will drop further. In order to cope with the reduction in the power generation capacity of the solar wing caused by the dusty weather and the extremely low ambient temperature in winter, according to the design plan and flight control strategy, the rover went into sleep mode on May 18. It is expected that around December this year, the "Zhurong" inspection area will enter the early spring season, and will resume normal work after the environmental conditions improve.

The orbiter is carrying out remote sensing exploration of the global coverage of Mars. The current imaging area is mainly concentrated in the high latitudes of the southern hemisphere of Mars. The mission team will use the orbiter as much as possible to continue to monitor local weather conditions.
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So we have to wait until late in the year for the return of Zhurong. But at least they expect it to resume operations.

Phil

[Huguet]

http://www.chinanews.com.cn/gn/2022/09-26/9861080.shtml
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05147-5

Publication in September 26 on Nature about the in situ ground-penetrating radar survey of Martian subsurface structure made by Zhurong.

It didn't found water within 80 meters below the surface. They still are interested on the mud volcanos... sugesting mabe a target for the rover.

The article provided links to request access for raw data:
It has more then 800 GB of raw data in 14 releases till now.

https://clpds.bao.ac.cn/web/enmanager/mars1
https://doi.org/10.12197/2022GA018
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05147-5#Sec13

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Huguet]

Submited but can't get anything. Probably is restrict for chinese public.
If anyone manage to, would be nice other high resolution image of the "rolling stones"...

[vikingmars]

Submited but can't get anything. Probably is restrict for chinese public.
If anyone manage to, would be nice other high resolution image of the "rolling stones"...

Thanks Huguet. Same for me: data is still not available and stated as "Acquisition within protection period", meaning that it is still under embargo

[Station]

Hi, any news about chinese rover? It should be back to operation by now....

[Phil Stooke]

Not yet but hoping for news soon.

Phil

[Huguet]

New post about the State Key Laboratory of Solar Activity and Space Weather, Lunar and Planetary exploration team.
But it is just a photo of the meeting.
The foreground image appears to be new.
RGB Channels are diferent from the released ones.
http://www.chinanews.com.cn/gn/2023/01-01/9925626.shtml

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Hungry4info]

SCMP has an article suggesting some concern that the rover has not yet awakened, as well as a plan to have Tianwen-1 image it from orbit to check on it -- at least that's the part of the article that I can see before the paywall.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/art...ate-sources-say

[Huguet]

SCMP has an article suggesting some concern that the rover has not yet awakenedhttps://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/art...ate-sources-say

Apears a problem with dust on the solar panels:

“It’s not hard to imagine that after a harsh sandstorm season, Zhurong is now probably all covered in the reddish Martian dust.”
"To make matters worse, solar radiation during the winter also dropped to a low level, further hampering the rover’s power supply."

"According to Jia Yang, deputy chief designer of the Tianwen-1 probe system, the rover is designed to wake up automatically when two conditions are met: its power level must hit 140 watts and the temperature of key components, batteries included, must exceed minus 15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit)."

[Hungry4info]

We were told at some point that the solar arrays were raised to help with this. Do we know that power generation is actually the problem here? I feel like we just know so little at the moment. Observations from orbit would help clarify this (as was done for MER to check solar array dust cover).

[Huguet]

We were told at some point that the solar arrays were raised to help with this. Do we know that power generation is actually the problem here? I feel like we just know so little at the moment. Observations from orbit would help clarify this (as was done for MER to check solar array dust cover).

Appears to me, by the last looks of the antenna and the change of colours at the track, that the dust somehow cover everywhere like a dense film...
Probably would be best to consider a active way or arm for the rover to periodicaly clean itself...

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Phil Stooke]

https://phys.org/news/2023-02-complex-subsu...ed-chinese.html

Nice article on the ground-penetrating radar on Zhurong. The paper it describes is behind a paywall (though not for me) but its supplementary data file is not (and this is true for supplementary files for many papers, so well worth checking out). Here's a link:

https://ndownloader.figstatic.com/files/38843295



Phil

[PaulH51]

HiPOD 21 Feb 2023: Monitoring the Zhurong Rover:

The Chinese Zhurong rover has been on Mars since 14 May 2021, and MRO/HiRISE has imaged it several times to track its progress and monitor the surface for changes.

This cutout is from three images acquired in 2022 and 2023. The rover is the dark and relatively bluish feature visible in the upper middle of the first (left) image and lower middle of the other two images. This time series shows that the rover has not changed its position between 8 September 2022 and 7 February 2023.

ID: ESP_077511_2055, date: 7 February 2023, altitude: 286 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_077511_2055

NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona

[Bill Harris]

Zhurong was supposed to revive from hibernation in December 2022.
Possibly, RIP?

--Bill