China Releases First Images From Martian Surface
China released the first photographs of its Zhurong rover on the surface of Mars. The vehicle landed on the Red Planet’s Utopia Planitia on May 14. China is the third nation after the Soviet Union and the United States to land on Mars.
China also released animated gif images of the Zhurong lander separating from the Tianwen-1 orbiter.
Zhurong will explore Mars with six instruments:
- ground-penetrating radar (GPR) capable of imaging 100 meters (330 ft) below the surface
- Mars surface magnetic field detector
- Mars meteorological measurement Instrument
- Mars surface compound detector, which combines laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy and infrared spectroscopy
- multi-spectrum camera
- navigation and topography camera.
8 responses to “China Releases First Images From Martian Surface”
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as speculated…high data link X band system
Looks a lot like the views from the old Opportunity/Spirit rovers. Wonder if when JPL was hacked by the Chinese in 2018 they got the specs/software on them.
probably not. the Chinese have fairly good mobile robotics and are quite good with drones…plus they are probably running hardware that is far far more sophisticated then what those two rovers or the current two rovers use ie faster processors
the X band link is interesting in how they did it…
Re: “the X band link is interesting in how they did it…”
How so?
is not terribly innovative 🙂 this is a pretty standard J hook feed (you can see the waveguide leading down to the back of the dish) feeding into an RF assembly below the dish. ok its fine, but the feed system at X bandcreates a substantial “lobe” issue because the waveguide is a non trivial size in a small dish (in comparison to the overall dish size) and…most designs of this time in technology would have gone with a phased array or slot feed to minimize all of that and maximize RF directivty in the main lobe
this would lead to a “flatplane” kind of antenna with slots in it. the US has been using this on small apateur systems since the surveyor probes of the Apollo era. and if you are going to use a dish at X band a Cassegrain feed is far far more effective
nothing wrong with what they did, just not all that innovative or current state of the art in space antenna design
Interesting. But it also suggests Chinese semiconductor tech may not be all that cutting-edge. Phased arrays need a lot more semiconductors than the approach you describe here. So its seems unlikely the on-board computer processors are any great shakes either.
The question of where are the images is answered. They said they had to change the orbit of the relay satellite. They sure lucked out and landed where there were no hazards, unlike Insight. Of course now they have to find something to look at interesting.
The Chinese lander incorporated a terrain image-driven autopilot landing system – so luck had nothing to do with it.