So the TianWen-1 is orbiting Mars, and getting ready to send a rover down to the planet's surface. Some reporting from Space.com
China's Tianwen-1 spacecraft has trimmed its orbit around Mars to allow the spacecraft to analyze the chosen landing region on the Red Planet.
After the burn, which occurred on Tuesday (Feb. 23), Tianwen-1 is now in position to begin imaging and collecting data on primary and backup landing sites for the mission's rover, which will attempt to touch down in May or June.
Tianwen-1, China's first independent interplanetary mission, consists of an orbiter and rover, which have been in Mars orbit as a single spacecraft since Feb. 10. The latest engine burn, at 5:29 p.m. EST Tuesday (2229 GMT, 06:29 Beijing time Wednesday), executed during the spacecraft's closest approach to Mars, greatly reduced its apoapsis, or farthest point from the planet.
All in preparation for:
The Tianwen-1 rover is contained within an aeroshell attached to the orbiter. This conical structure will both protect and slow the rover during its fiery, hypersonic entry into the Martian atmosphere at the start of the landing attempt. A supersonic parachute will further slow the rover before retropropulsion engines provide the final deceleration for the soft landing.
The rover carries science payloads to investigate surface soil characteristics and mineral composition and to search for potential water ice with a ground penetrating radar. The rover is designed to operate for 90 Mars sols (92 Earth days) with the Tianwen-1 orbiter serving to relay communications and data between the rover and the Earth. The orbiter is designed to operate for a total of one Mars year, or about 687 Earth days.
Getting crowded in the Martian sky!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday February 26 2021, @06:40PM (2 children)
As I recall, if you're enthusiastic about putting people on Mars, this is one of the big ones to pay attention to. It's landing in one of the prime colonization areas, a location at moderate latitudes where temperatures will be (relatively) mild and long winter nights won't cripple solar power. And (we think) amdist hundreds of cubic kilometers of water ice within tens of meters of the surface.
Pretty much all the other high-ranked potential locations are clustered around glaciers at much higher latitudes, where seasonal variations will be far more extreme.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @08:40PM (1 child)
So you’re hoping China stakes a claim on this prime real estate?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday February 26 2021, @09:44PM
"Prime real estate" implies there's something of value there. So far as I've seen, there's *nothing* of economic value on Mars, and very few people will go there for the view.
Unlike the Americas, there's no rich natural resources on Mars valuable enough to ship back. Anything we do there will almost certainly be a huge cost sink until long after anyone currently in power is dead. All the value to be had there is in researching Mars. And in developing the technologies to colonize other, richer locations. As such, I fully expect any colonization efforts to resemble the international cooperation applied to the Antarctic research station or the ISS. There's just no profit to be had trying to go it alone.
Mars may eventually bloom into a rich world producing goods worth exporting to Earth. But for the next many decades the highest aspiration for any colony is that it become self sufficient enough to stop being a hugely expensive maintenance headache for Earth.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @07:07PM
i only hope the chinese rover doesn't have the chinese flu!
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @07:12PM (1 child)
Because the first thing a Chinaman does when arriving in a new country is set up a laundry. Restaurant comes next, after he's ve saved up enough money to buy a wok.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @08:36PM
(Score: 3, Funny) by Billy the Mountain on Friday February 26 2021, @07:21PM
Hope it has liability insurance since there are now multiple rovers on Mars.
(Score: 2) by EJ on Friday February 26 2021, @09:19PM
Let's see if China has better CGI than NASA.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @01:11AM (1 child)
It'd nice to see a Chinese restaurant when we finally land on mars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:58AM
Where are they going to get the MSG?