| Title | China's Tianwen-1 Lowers its Orbit Around Mars to Prepare for Rover Landing | |
| Date | Friday February 26 2021, @05:48PM | |
| Author | martyb | |
| Topic | ||
| from the Crowded-Red-Planet dept. | ||
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!
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printed from SoylentNews, China's Tianwen-1 Lowers its Orbit Around Mars to Prepare for Rover Landing on 2024-04-19 23:07:24