Tianwen-1- Development, China's 2020 Mission Options

[Antdoghalo]

Searching Alan Boyle's twitter posts I chanced upon a post by Thomas Schumann. At the EPSC-DPS 2019 Joint Meeting the late Dr. Wei Yan gave a presentation about China's first Mars mission. One of the slides clearly shows two landing sites in Utopia Planitia. Thomas also says "As far as I've understood, the Chinese will evaluate final landing sites once in orbit."

Here is a Google Mars globe with the CTX map made available by Google (see the side bar for how to enable the CTX global map) and those two areas marked, and a closer view that shows Area A has very little coverage. However, Google has not mapped every CTX image, so other images may be available (as well as from the HiRISE camera).

[attachment=46048:Tianwen_...gSites_2.jpg] [attachment=46049:Tianwen_...gSites_1.jpg]

This is the kmz file I used to mark the areas. [attachment=46047:Tianwen_...ingAreas.kmz]

Fernando

Quite true, Google's CTX layer is 9 years old and MRO has since mapped almost the entire planet with it aside from a couple tiny areas in the poles
https://themis.asu.edu/maps I used this site to find HiRise and CTX images that are not available in GE, (though I wish you could sort by year it's hard to find pre-post landing pictures when there's 100s of HiRISE images saturating a location)

[Phil Stooke]

http://murray-lab.caltech.edu/CTX/

This is a link to the global mosaic. I think you can get it a tile at a time, not sure if you can also navigate the mosaic like the lunar and Mercury Quickmaps.

Phil

[nogal]

Many thanks for the link Phil.
Laura Kerber had mentioned to me that creation of a global mosaic was ongoing, which might be useful to another project I'm working on, but I never got to use it.
Looking at the linked LPSC abstract I feel very sure this is the one she mentioned. There is a lot to explore here, it is truly gigantic! Thanks again

Fernando

[Hungry4info]

There's a video here talking about the rover -- very general information. Of interest is driving tests, and apparently the fact that the rover has steering motors on all six wheels. They showed a demonstration rover driving "sideways."

The Tianwen-1 Mars rover
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KquNADst7r8

[Phil Stooke]

http://9ifly.spacety.com/forum.php?mod=vie...ge=84#pid756198



This post on the Chinese 9ifly forum says (Google translation):

"The landing site was mentioned in the article "Running the Fire: Flying to "Utopia"" published by the China Aerospace Journal.

The preferred landing site for the "Tianwen-1" Mars exploration mission is located at the southern end of the Martian Utopia Plain, which belongs to the lowland unit of the late Hesperia period (110.318 degrees east longitude, 24.748 degrees north latitude). The alternative location is located in the southeastern part of the Utopia Plain, in the Erythian Volcanic magma flow zone, close to the entrance of the Erythian Volcanic magma into the Utopian Plain."

I have not been able to find the article but if anyone has a source i would like to know about it. This is within the western of the two boxes Nogal mentioned.

Phil

[Paolo]

I don't think this paper on TW-1 has been mentioned yet:

Overview of China’s 2020 Mars mission design and navigation

Scheduled for an Earth-to-Mars launch opportunity in 2020, the China’s Mars probe will arrive on Mars in 2021 with the primary objective of injecting an orbiter and placing a lander and a rover on the surface of the Red Planet. For China’s 2020 Mars exploration mission to achieve success, many key technologies must be realized. In this paper, China’s 2020 Mars mission and the spacecraft architecture are first introduced. Then, the preliminary launch opportunity, Earth–Mars transfer, Mars capture, and mission orbits are described. Finally, the main navigation schemes are summarized.

you can download the pdf from researchgate https://www.researchgate.net/publication/31..._and_Navigation

[Phil Stooke]

http://9ifly.spacety.com/thread-93048-85-1.html

Picture of Earth and Moon taken by TW1 from 1.2 million km.



Credit: CNSA

EDIT: oops, not Mars! Thanks Lucas...

Phil

[Lucas]

Neat! Hopefully that’s the Moon or else we’re in a lot of trouble!

http://9ifly.spacety.com/thread-93048-85-1.html

Picture of Earth and Mars taken by TW1 from 1.2 million km.



Credit: CNSA

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

Quick look at the coordinates recently suggested in Chinese media:

This is Mars Odyssey THEMIS infrared with inverted shading -white areas would be dark, or cool, in THEMIS and most are associated with small craters so they are probably blocky. The circle is the site mentioned in recent posts. It's smaller than their landing ellipse, only designed to show the area noted in the media post.



That corresponds to this MRO CTX image (image number is in file name if you save it):



The site is in the upper right corner of this image.

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

This is the area around that identified point - the image is about 10 km wide. There should be visible crater rims to provide relief in the panoramas. We don't know this will be the site and this is a lot smaller than the landing ellipse.

Phil

[nprev]

Hmm. Looks a bit dusty (shocker). All those short white streaks are more than a bit intriguing in this view; hopefully they'll be able to reach one.

[vikingmars]

There are lots of pingos south of this site : maybe an hint to the presence of sub-surface ice and/or permafrost

[spacepoint]

Here is some info about mission and rover itself.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-07-24/Tech-...Yjh6/index.html
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-07-25/Tech-...7B2U/index.html

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Phil Stooke]

"All those short white streaks are more than a bit intriguing"

They are dust drifts, perpendicular to the prevailing wind. HiRISE would show them more clearly than CTX does. I expect we will see one up close eventually.

Phil

[volcanopele]

Thanks for posting the central coordinates, Phil, I've been wanting to see if CaSSIS has any coverage of the landing site. Any chance for a landing ellipse? The best image I could find was a bit to the southeast.