Zhurong: Landing of China's Mars rover is imminent

Sallie Anderson
Zhurong: Landung von Chinas Mars-Rover steht unmittelbar bevor Images
Mars – captured by the Chinese Tianwen-1 space probe. (Photo: CNSA)
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China’s Mars rover Zhurong will land in the next few days, maybe on Saturday , on the red planet. Chinese scientists are also facing “seven minutes of terror”.

on 18. February the NASA rover Perseverance landed on Mars. Now, around three months later, China is starting preparations for its Tianwen-1 space probe. It has been in orbit of the Red Planet since February – with the Chinese Mars rover Zhurong on board. The rover could land in a few hours, Saturday morning Beijing time. The period announced by the Chinese space agency CNSA for the landing in the Mars region Utopia Planitia runs from Saturday to Wednesday.

Tianwen-1: China is confident

According to the state newspaper Global Times, Chinese scientists are optimistic about the planned landing on Mars. After all, the landing of the Chang’e 5 space probe on the moon in December was already successful. The two missions would be very similar, it was said. It is planned that the Tianwen-1 will enter the Martian atmosphere within around nine minutes, decelerate from 4.9 kilometers per second to almost zero and then land.

Mars images from the Tianwen-1 spacecraft
Tianwen-1 schickt nicht nur Bilder aus weiter Entfernung … (Foto: CNSA) Images
Tianwen-1 not only sends pictures from a long distance … (Photo: CNSA)

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The Chinese scientists must also do the so-called “seven minutes of terror ” survive. This generally means the time between entering the atmosphere and landing on Mars. According to the Chinese space expert Pang Zhihao, this time can vary depending on the design of the probe and the type of landing maneuver.

Autonomous Mars landing

The term “terror / horror “Stems from the fact that the entire landing maneuver has to run autonomously. The scientists involved do not find out until several minutes after the landing whether it was successful at all. The corresponding signals take around 20 minutes to arrive on earth and in the control center of the Chinese space agency. Part of the landing maneuver is that the probe hovers 100 meters above the surface shortly before landing and uses its sensors, including an on-board camera, to search for a safe place to land.
After landing, the Mars rover Zhurong, named after an ancient fire god in Chinese mythology, staying on the Red Planet for at least three months of Mars and researching. The vehicle, which is 1.85 meters tall and weighs around 240 kilograms, will examine the atmosphere and the soil of Mars. Like the NASA rover Perseverance, Zhurong is also supposed to take pictures of the Red Planet. The mapping of the surface is also one of the tasks of the Chinese Mars rover, as the Futurezone writes.

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