China’s space mission came in limelight when its Zhurong mars rover completed the landing on Mars. Marking the country’s first landing on other planet. Now the team is ready to move the rover off its platform to land and go to the dusty Martian ground to begin work. To find evidence of the water and tell the story of the past life.
The Zhurong rover went through so called the “seven minutes of fear,” the time from the air to entering the land surface. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) was just watching the launch from close to 200 million miles away. Wait of just 18 minutes to receive a signal from Mars – and hoped everything went according to plan.
The thinness of the air is not enough to slow down the journey to the ground, and the spacecraft descends towards Mars at high speed. The air waves that are filled by the rapidly generating heat or generating capsule of heat must be expelled. The landing platform holding the rover then pulled the rocket into the final descent to the ground. The orbiter got up and returned to its station about half an hour after the separation, to provide communications for a craft landing. The Chinese space headquarters told Global Times that the Landing-rover circled around Mars for another three hours. Before entering the Mars atmosphere route to the landing.
Zhurong Mars Rover design
Zhurong mars rover sat connected to its fellow orbiter, locked in an aeroshell aircraft designed to prevent it through Martian air. After it was released and overcame the entrance to the fire, large parachute was deployed to slow down the rover’s descent. A laser range finder and a 3D scanner provide height and ground data while camera is used to independently select an area to land.
The Zhurong rover carries a suite of six instruments. A pair of panoramic cameras and a multispectral imager will provide information about the terrain and its composition. So an instrument with a laser will vaporize rocks to analyze their makeup. Similar to the laser spectrometers aboard Curiosity and Perseverance. A magnetometer will measure magnetic fields in tandem with an instrument on the orbiter. And a climate station will measure the local atmosphere, temperature, pressure, wind, and sound on Mars.
When Zhurong’s six wheels turn on the platform landing and go to Martian dust. The rover will unfold its butterfly-like solar panels and explore the area for the main mission which lasts three months. It takes 17 minutes to spread its solar radiation and send the signal back to Earth. Zhurong has laser equipment for zap rocks to measure their chemical and radar to look for underwater ice.
The plains are part of the north lower lands of Mars. If there had been water on the red planet a few years ago, this land could have been under water. And maybe the part of the ocean covering the upper surface of the planet. Utopia Planitia lies below the characteristics claimed in two groups of shorelines, remnants from early Martian Ocean. Some water from the oceans was once thought to be on the ground and can still be frozen in today.
Utopia Planitia, thought to be the site of ancient sea, has sedimentary layers that could contain evidence of past water. Even more exciting, these layers of rock could contain traces of any past life on Mars, says James Head III, a planetary scientist at Brown University.
By arriving at Mars and orbited it in February, China’s space agency has recognized its strength as one of the highest level of solar research institutes to explore solar system. This is not China’s first test of the Mars mission. Yinghuo-1, was not completed nearly 10 years ago, without the fault of the country itself. The spacecraft was burned in mid-air because a Russian rocket carrying it failed in flight.
