Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizen Xiao Zhan for the clue delivery! CTOnews.com, April 25 news, the first Chinese spacecraft to set foot on the surface of Mars-- "Zhu Rong" has extended its service, and has not awakened since it went into dormancy on May 18 last year. Zhang Rongqiao, chief designer of China's planetary exploration project, revealed in an exclusive interview with CCTV reporter that this may be because the accumulation of sand and dust affected its power generation capacity.

Zhang Rongqiao said that the "Zhu Rong" rover, which has a design life of 90 Mars days, has inspected 358 Mars days, traveled a total of 1921 meters, and achieved rich scientific achievements. However, as the northern hemisphere of Mars entered winter, the sun was weak and sandstorms were frequent, the Mars rover automatically went into dormancy on May 18 last year. In order to wake up automatically, it is necessary to meet both the cabin temperature above-15 ℃ and solar power generation to meet the minimum electricity consumption of the rover (up to 140W).

At present, Mars has entered spring, but Zhu Rong still has not awakened on its own. Zhang Rongqiao analysis, the most likely is the unpredictable accumulation of Martian dust, resulting in a reduction in power generation capacity, not enough to revive it. If it exceeds 20% of the designed dust, the power generation capacity is not enough, and if the dust accumulation exceeds the expected 30%, it may not be available until the sun is at its strongest. If the dust accumulates more than 40% of what it can bear, the rover will never wake up.

Zhang Rongqiao also introduced China's follow-up deep space exploration plan. The "Tianming II" mission has basically completed the preliminary sample development phase and will be launched around May 2025 to detect and sample a near-Earth asteroid. This will be the first time that China has retrieved a sample from the interplanetary. In addition, Tianwen 3 will carry out Mars sampling and return, and Tianwen 4 will explore Jupiter and its moons. These tasks have great difficulties and challenges, and need to be tackled by key technologies and engineering development. Zhang Rongqiao said: to realize the grand blueprint for the development of planetary exploration, we will live up to everyone's expectations.

CTOnews.com Note: Zhu Rong is a rover for Tianming-1 mission. It is 1.85 meters high and weighs about 240kg. 12:41 on July 23, 2020, the long March 5 remote four carrier rocket was launched from China's Wenchang Space launch site. 10:40 on May 22, 2021, the Zhu Rong rover safely left the landing platform, reached the surface of Mars and began to patrol and explore.

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