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Tianwen-1 ("Questions to Heaven"-1)

Aug 3, 2020

Non-EO

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CNSA

Quick facts

Overview

Mission typeNon-EO
AgencyCNSA
Launch date23 Jul 2020

Tianwen-1 (China's First Mars Exploration Mission)

Spacecraft    Launch    Mission Status     Sensor Complement    References

China's first Mars exploration mission has been named Tianwen-1. CNSA (China National Space Administration) unveiled the mission name and logo in a ceremony on 24 April 2020 to mark the 50th anniversary of the launch of the country’s first satellite. DFH-1 launched on a Long March 1 rocket from Jiuquan April 24, 1970, making China the fifth country to independently launch a satellite. 1) 2)

Tianwen-1, meaning ‘questions to heaven’, is taken from the name of a long-form poem by Qu Yuan, a poet born in the fourth century B.C., according to CNSA chief engineer Xiaochun Ge.

The ‘Lanxingjiutian’ logo includes representations of the Latin letter ‘c’, referring to China, cooperation, and the cosmic velocity required to undertake planetary exploration. Further Chinese planetary missions will also carry the Tianwen name.

Figure 1: The logo for the Mars mission (l), and the general logo for Planetary exploration of China (r). The logo includes the 8 planets and 'C's, representing China, cooperation & the cosmic velocity required to carry out interplanetary exploration (image credit: CNSA, Andrew Jones)
Figure 1: The logo for the Mars mission (l), and the general logo for Planetary exploration of China (r). The logo includes the 8 planets and 'C's, representing China, cooperation & the cosmic velocity required to carry out interplanetary exploration (image credit: CNSA, Andrew Jones)

According to the administration, the country's first Martian probe will conduct scientific investigations about the Martian soil, geological structure, environment, atmosphere as well as water.

The robotic probe will consist of three parts – the orbiter, the lander and the rover. The rover will have six wheels and four solar panels, and will carry 13 scientific instruments. The payload mass will be more than 200 kg and will work about three months on the planet, said Sun Zezhou, the probe's chief designer at the China Academy of Space Technology.

Peijian Ye, a leading scientist in deep-space exploration at the academy, said the probe will land on the Martian surface before July 2021.

China is understood to be planning a Mars sample return mission, a Jupiter orbiter and considering possible missions to icy giants and interstellar space. A joint near-Earth asteroid sample return and comet rendezvous mission has also been proposed.

”The country’s first Martian probe will conduct scientific investigations about the Martian soil, geological structure, environment, atmosphere, as well as water,” CNSA said in a statement.

As the Tianwen-1 spacecraft is scheduled for launch in late July or early August, the mission chief scientist and his team provide an overview focusing on the scientific objectives and instrumentation of China’s first Mars mission. 3)

Background: Among the eight planets in the Solar System, Mars is the most similar to Earth and is also close by. It therefore naturally becomes a high-priority target for space exploration. Mars offers a substantial and pragmatic opportunity to answer key questions concerning the existence of extraterrestrial life, and the origin and evolution of the Solar System, and to explore the possibility of human habitation. From the first space probes to fly by the planet in the 1960s to the planetary orbiters and rovers of today, the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and India have developed Mars exploration programs to fulfil human aspirations. So far, only NASA has successfully landed and operated spacecraft on Mars.

China announced its planetary exploration program beyond the Earth–Moon system in 2016. 4) Benefiting from the engineering heritage of China’s lunar exploration program2, 5) the Chinese national strategy set Mars as the next target for planetary exploration. China’s first Mars mission is named Tianwen-1, and aims to complete orbiting, landing and roving in one mission. The name means ‘questions to heaven’, taken from the name of a poem by Qu Yuan (about 340–278 bc), one of the greatest poets in ancient China. Tianwen-1 is currently on track for a July or August 2020 launch, with arrival at Mars seven months later (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Artist’s impression of the Tianwen-1 mission. The mission will study the Red Planet with a combination of orbiter and lander/rover (image credit: CNSA)
Figure 2: Artist’s impression of the Tianwen-1 mission. The mission will study the Red Planet with a combination of orbiter and lander/rover (image credit: CNSA)

How Tianwen-1 Will Explore Mars

As China’s first Mars mission, Tianwen-1 is uniquely ambitious. No nation has ever attempted to send an orbiter and rover to Mars on the first try. Getting from space to the Martian surface is a unique challenge that China will be facing for the first time. Mars landings require heat shielding, thrusters, and supersonic parachutes—a teeth-gnashing experience that NASA has dubbed the “7 minutes of terror.” The landing platform and rover are expected to touch down on Utopia Planitia—the vast Martian plain where NASA’s Viking 2 spacecraft landed in the 1970s, and the site of a shipbuilding yard in the Star Trek universe. 6)

Once on Mars, the Tianwen-1 landing platform will extend a ramp, allowing the rover to roll gently onto the surface—similar to the way China’s Chang’e Moon rovers are deployed. The rover can communicate with Earth directly, or with the Tianwen-1 orbiter, which can relay signals. The orbiter has its own set of science instruments for studying Mars, including a high-resolution camera that should produce stunning images.

The rover will have cameras, instruments for studying Mars’ climate and geology, and even an instrument to zap rocks and record the resulting chemical signatures—just like NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. The rover radar works by shooting radio waves into the surface and measuring reflection times, allowing scientists on Earth to piece together a 3D map of what lies beneath.

China’s Yutu-2 rover used radar on the far side of the Moon to reveal 3 distinct layers extending 40 meters beneath the surface. Scientists tested a rover-sized radar in China’s Qaidim basin—a cold, desert region like Mars—and were able to detect underground water pockets of water. On Earth, these pockets can host thriving microbial communities, so detecting them on Mars would be an important step in our search for life on other worlds.



 

Spacecraft

The Tianwen-1 mission (known as Huoxing 1 during development) consists of an orbiter and a lander with rover. The Tianwen-1 spacecraft is developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), and managed by the National Space Science Center (NSSC) in Beijing. The lander carrying the rover will use a parachute, retrorockets, and an airbag to achieve landing. If the landing is successful, the lander would then release a rover. The rover will be powered by solar panels and is expected to probe the Martian surface with radar and to perform chemical analyzes on the soil; it would also look for biomolecules and biosignatures. 7)

The Tianwen-1 probe, with a mass (including fuel) of about 5 tons, comprises an orbiter and a lander/rover composite. The orbiter will provide a relay communication link to the rover, while performing its own scientific observations for one Martian year. The orbit during the scientific observation stage is a polar elliptical orbit (265 km x 12,000 km). The lander/rover will perform a soft landing on the Martian surface some 2–3 months after arrival of the spacecraft, with a candidate landing site in Utopia Planitia. The ~240 kg solar-powered rover is nearly twice the mass of China’s Yutu lunar rovers, and is expected to be in operation for about 90 Martian days.

The main task of Tianwen-1 is to perform a global and extensive survey of the entire planet using the orbiter, and to send the rover to surface locations of scientific interests to conduct detailed investigations with high accuracy and resolution. Specifically, the scientific objectives of Tianwen-1 include: (1) to map the morphology and geological structure, (2) to investigate the surface soil characteristics and water-ice distribution, (3) to analyze the surface material composition, (4) to measure the ionosphere and the characteristics of the Martian climate and environment at the surface, and (5) to perceive the physical fields (electromagnetic, gravitational) and internal structure of Mars.

Some parameters of the Tianwen-1 mission:

The total launch mass is 5000 kg. The orbiter has a mass of 3,175 kg, the rover has a mass of 240 kg.

Figure 3: This infographic shows the location of instruments aboard China's Tianwen-1 orbiter (image credit: Andrew Jones, Ref. 6)
Figure 3: This infographic shows the location of instruments aboard China's Tianwen-1 orbiter (image credit: Andrew Jones, Ref. 6)
Figure 4: This infographic shows the location of instruments aboard China's Tianwen-1 Rover (image credit: Andrew Jones, Ref. 6)
Figure 4: This infographic shows the location of instruments aboard China's Tianwen-1 Rover (image credit: Andrew Jones, Ref. 6)

 

Development Status

• July 23, 2020: Tianwen 1 is a Chinese-led project, but scientists and support teams from several countries have agreed to provide assistance on the mission (Ref. 12).

- Scientists from IRAP (Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie) in France contributed to a Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy instrument on the Tianwen 1 rover.

- French scientists, with support from the French space agency CNES, provided guidance to their Chinese counterparts on the spectroscopy technique, which uses a laser to zap a pinhead-size portion of a rock, and a spectrometer to analyze the light given off by plasma generated by the laser’s interaction with the rock’s surface. The technique allows an instrument to determine the chemical make-up of rocks on Mars.

- Scientists from the Space Research Institute at the Austrian Academy of Sciences assisted in the development of the magnetometer on the Tianwen-1 orbiter and helped calibrate the flight instrument.

- Argentina is home to a Chinese-owned deep space tracking antenna that will be used to communicate with Tianwen-1 after launch. The European Space Agency has agreed to provide communications time for Tianwen-1 on its own worldwide network of deep space tracking stations, and help with the probe’s navigation on the journey to Mars.

Figure 5: Logos for ESA (European Space Agency), the French space agency CNES, Argentina’s space agency CONAE, and the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) are installed on the Long March 5’s payload fairing (image credit: China National Space Administration)
Figure 5: Logos for ESA (European Space Agency), the French space agency CNES, Argentina’s space agency CONAE, and the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) are installed on the Long March 5’s payload fairing (image credit: China National Space Administration)
Figure 6: Ground teams pose with the Tianwen-1 spacecraft in its launch configuration, with the mission’s orbiter, lander and rover connected together (image credit: CASC, Ref. 12)
Figure 6: Ground teams pose with the Tianwen-1 spacecraft in its launch configuration, with the mission’s orbiter, lander and rover connected together (image credit: CASC, Ref. 12)

• April 24, 2020 was China's "Space Day," celebrated on the 50 year anniversary of their first satellite launch. On this day, China marked the occasion with the announcement of the name for their first Mars Lander: Tianwen. 8)

- According to China's National Space Administration (CNSA), Tianwen translates to "Quest for Heavenly Truth."

- China is enjoying the success of their recent Chang'e-4 mission to the Moon, which includes a lander, a rover, and also a communications satellite. Now, they're launching a mission to Mars, scheduled for this upcoming July. The Tianwen mission will also feature an orbiter, a lander, and a six-wheeled, solar-powered rover.

- The CNSA isn't as open as NASA or other space agencies, so some of the details of the mission are unclear. But it is roughly aligned with other Mars missions, which are investigating the current and past conditions on Mars, and whether they were conducive to habitability. According to the CNSA, ".... the Martian probe will conduct scientific investigations about the Martian soil, geological structure, environment, atmosphere as well as water." In 2016, the official Chinese news outlet Xinhua reported that Tianwen will "probe the ground with radar, perform chemical analyzes on the soil, and look for biomolecules and biosignatures."

- The CNSA also said, "The name represents the Chinese people's relentless pursuit of truth, the country's cultural inheritance of its understanding of nature and universe, as well as the unending explorations in science and technology." That's all well and good, but what are some of the details of the mission?

- The spacecraft, which will arrive at Mars sometime in February 2021 (if the July launch date is firm) will orbit the planet for some time. China hasn't said exactly when the lander/rover will be deployed to the surface. But when it is, it's expected that it'll use retrorockets, airbags, and a parachute to manage its descent and landing.

- It looks like the Tianwen name applies to the lander, but the rover will get its own name. The rover will be a six-wheeled, solar powered rover, and should have a mission length of at least three months. It'll carry 13 scientific instruments and will weigh more than 200 kg.

- Though important all on its own, the Tianwen mission is also a technology demonstration mission for China's next mission to Mars, which is an ambitious sample-return mission slated for the 2030s.

- None of this is a slam-dunk, of course. We're getting accustomed to successful landings on Mars, largely thanks to NASA. But many attempts at landing a spacecraft on Mars have failed abysmally. There's a lot of sophisticated technology that must be deployed effectively to work. And though China has recently had success with their Moon mission, other countries' missions to Mars have not gone well.

- The first attempt at landing on Mars dates back to 1962, when the Soviet Union tried to get a lander to Mars. That mission failed to leave Low Earth Orbit. In more modern times, March 2016 to be exact, the ESA's Schiaparelli EDM lander crashed when it tried to land on Mars. In fact, only the USA and Russia/Soviet Union have successfully landed craft on Mars, and only NASA has successfully landed rovers.

- This won't be China's first mission to Mars. They were part of the Russian Phobos-Grunt mission. That spacecraft was meant to visit the Martian moon Phobos and return a sample, but China included their Yinghuo-1 Mars orbiter on that mission. That mission was destroyed when the rocket exploded.

- As for landing sites, initially the CNSA was looking at two possibilities. Those were the Chryse Planitia region, and the Elysium Mons region. However, in 2019 China announced that they had identified two preliminary landing ellipses, both in the Utopia Planitia region. Each of the ellipses is about 100 by 40 km.

• March 25, 2020: China aims to become only the second country to land and operate a spacecraft on the surface of Mars (NASA was first with a pair of Viking landers in 1976 if you don’t count the former Soviet Union’s 1971 Mars 3 mission). With just a few months before launch, China is still keeping key mission details quiet. But we can discern a few points about where and how it will attempt a landing on the Red Planet from recent presentations and interviews. 9)

- The launch: Celestial mechanics dictate that China, along with NASA’s Perseverance rover and the Hope orbiter from the United Arab Emirates, will launch around late July during a Hohmann transfer window, which comes around only once every 26 months and allows a trip to Mars using as little propellant as possible.

- A huge Long March 5 rocket will send the Chinese spacecraft on a journey for about seven months, after which it will fire rockets in order to enter orbit around Mars in February 2021.

- The 5-metric-ton spacecraft consists of an orbiter and the landing segment for the rover. It’s expected that the spacecraft will remain coupled in orbit until April. The orbiter will employ a pair of cameras to image the preselected landing sites, before attempting to set down the 240-kilogram rover (which has yet to be publicly named) on the surface.

- The landing: Landing on Mars presents unique challenges. There’s a thin atmosphere that dangerously heats spacecraft but does little to slow them and a different gravitational field than is found on Earth. But China has experience from earlier space exploits to guide the way.

- Earth and Mars will be around 150 million kilometers apart when the orbiter arrives, so it will take eight minutes for communications signals to travel each way. Therefore the spacecraft’s guidance, navigation, and control, or GNC, for the landing process will be fully autonomous. This system will be based on the GNC of Chang’e-4, which autonomously achieved the first landing on the far side of the moon in 2019.

- The blunt body aerodynamics of the entry capsule’s heating shield, which is shaped like a spherical cone whose tip forms a 70-degree angle, will provide the first deceleration as it hits the atmosphere traveling at a rate of kilometers per second. Next, while traveling at supersonic speeds, a disk-gap-band parachute will deploy to further slow the spacecraft, and then be discarded. China has drawn on technology and experience from its Shenzhou crewed spacecraft, which has allowed astronauts to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and safely land, for these phases.

- Retropropulsion will be responsible for slowing the spacecraft during its final descent. Most of this will be provided by a 7,500-Newton variable thrust engine, like the main engine used by China’s Chang’e-3 and -4 lunar landers. The lander will employ a laser range finder and a microwave ranging velocity sensor to gain navigation data—technology that was also developed initially for China’s moon missions.

- The lander will separate from the main body of the spacecraft at an altitude of 70 meters, according to Zhang Rongqiao, mission chief designer, and enter a hover phase to search for a safe landing spot. 3D laser scanning, or lidar, will provide terrain data such as elevation. Obstacle-avoiding mode, facilitated by optical cameras, will begin at 20 meters above the surface.

- Some of these processes are apparent in this mesmeric footage of the Chang’e-4 landing. An obstacle avoidance phase is apparent as the spacecraft makes its descent to the crater-covered lunar surface which appears fractal in nature.

• In late 2019, the Xi'an Aerospace Propulsion Institute, a subsidiary of CASC, stated that the performance and control of the future spacecraft's propulsion system has been verified and had passed all requisite pre-flight tests, including tests for hovering, hazard avoidance, deceleration, and landing. The main component of the lander's propulsion system consists of a single engine that provides 7500 newtons of thrust. The spacecraft's supersonic parachute system had also been successfully tested previously. 10)

- CNSA initially focused on the Chryse Planitia and on the Elysium Mons regions of Mars in its search for possible landing sites for the lander and its associated rover. However, in September 2019, during a joint meeting in Geneva of the European Planetary Science Congress-Division for Planetary Sciences, Chinese presenters announced that two preliminary sites in the Utopia Planitia region of Mars have instead been chosen for the anticipated landing attempt, with each site having a landing ellipse of approximately 100 by 40 km.

Figure 7: The China Aerospace Technology Corporation (CASC) unveiled the first picture of the country's Mars explorer, a spacecraft set to be launched for Planet Mars in 2020 (image credit: CASC)
Figure 7: The China Aerospace Technology Corporation (CASC) unveiled the first picture of the country's Mars explorer, a spacecraft set to be launched for Planet Mars in 2020 (image credit: CASC)

• November 21, 2018: China has selected two preliminary areas on Mars for what will be the country’s first landing attempt at landing on another planet, to take place in early 2021. 11)

- The mission ambitiously involves a combined orbiter and rover and is set to launch in summer 2020 with a fleet of vehicles from other nations that includes NASA’s Mars 2020 rover, the United Arab Emirates’ Hope Mars Mission and ExoMars 2020.

- The colorized topographic map showing two candidate areas is based on data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA), an instrument on NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft launched in 1996.

- The first area targets Chryse Planitia, close to the landing sites of Viking 1 and Pathfinder, while the second covers Isidis Planitia and stretches to the western edge of the Elysium Mons region. The final landing site has yet to be selected, with several teams likely involved in providing candidate sites—a process similar to China’s lunar missions.

Figure 8: China Mars 2020 rover landing sites Map indicating two preliminary landing areas for China's 2020 Mars rover presented at the sessions of COPUOS in Vienna, Austria in June 2018 (image credit: CNSA)
Figure 8: China Mars 2020 rover landing sites Map indicating two preliminary landing areas for China's 2020 Mars rover presented at the sessions of COPUOS in Vienna, Austria in June 2018 (image credit: CNSA)

- The map recently appeared in a presentation at the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) in June, and again in a presentation by mission engineers at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Germany last month.

- As this is China’s first independent interplanetary mission, teams will need to succeed on a range of technological challenges including orbital insertion and landing. The country recently made progress on that front with successful supersonic parachute tests and tests of a subsurface detection radar from a hot air balloon in October (link in Chinese).


Launch

On July 23, 2020 (04:41 UTC) a heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket propelled China’s first Mars landing mission toward the Red Planet from the Wenchang spaceport on Hainan Island in southern China. CNSA confirmed the Long March 5 rocket placed Tianwen-1 on the proper course toward Mars about 36 minutes after launch. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC), the government-owned prime contractor for China’s space program, declared the launch a success in a statement. 12)

Figure 9: A Long March 5 rocket takes off from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on Hainan Island with the Tianwen-1 Mars mission (image credit: Xinhua)
Figure 9: A Long March 5 rocket takes off from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on Hainan Island with the Tianwen-1 Mars mission (image credit: Xinhua)

Tianwen-1 is scheduled to arrive at Mars next February after a seven-month voyage. If successful, the mission will be China’s first probe to enter orbit around another planet.

Two-to-three months later, the Tianwen-1 orbiter will release a lander to enter the Martian atmosphere and aim for a controlled touchdown in Utopia Planitia, a broad plain in Mars’s northern hemisphere. Once on the surface, the lander will lower a ramp and a 240 kg rover will drive onto the surface.

If China pulls off those feats according to plan, they will make China the third country to perform a soft landing on Mars — after the Soviet Union and the United States — and the second country to drive a robotic rover on the Red Planet.

Mars orbit: After reaching Mars in February, the Tianwen-1 spacecraft will initially enter a long-period capture orbit around the Red Planet. The orbiter will eventually settle in a loop around Mars ranging between 265 km and nearly 12,000 km over the Martian poles.

As soon as next April, the lander and rover modules will detach from the orbiter to begin a descent through the Martian atmosphere. Radar soundings from orbit have indicated the presence of a reservoir of ice containing as much water as Lake Superior, the largest of the Great Lakes, in the Utopia Planitia region targeted by Tianwen-1’s lander.

Figure 10: Planned orbital trajectory at Mars. A scheme of the different orbits that the Chinese probe Tianwen-1 will use around Mars, with informations on the orbital parameters of each of them 13)
Figure 10: Planned orbital trajectory at Mars. A scheme of the different orbits that the Chinese probe Tianwen-1 will use around Mars, with informations on the orbital parameters of each of them 13)



 

Mission Status

• August 18, 2021: China's Tianwen 1 Mars mission has generated a great deal of engineering and scientific data that will extensively advance research about the planet and support future exploration, according to mission leaders. 14)

- Liu Jianjun, chief designer of the Tianwen 1 mission's scientific system, said on Tuesday in Beijing that the 13 scientific devices mounted on Tianwen 1's orbiter and the Zhurong rover have generated more than 420 gigabytes of primary data since the mission was launched on 23 July, 2020, from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province.

- Zhurong alone has obtained about 10 GB of primary data since it began to travel on the Martian surface on May 22. By Sunday, the robot had moved 889 meters, Liu said.

- "The data will substantially boost scientists' studies of the planet. Data about Mars' landforms, material compositions and magnetic characteristics will help us investigate its environmental evolution," Liu said.

- "For instance, we tasked the rover with surveying sand dunes it moves past, and by analyzing the data, researchers will be able to know about the dunes' origin, composition and movement, and their findings will allow scientists to deepen their knowledge about weather and climate change on the planet."

Figure 11: The terrain of Mars is shown in a photo taken by the Zhurong rover, which landed on the Red Planet on May 15 (image credit: China National Space Administration)
Figure 11: The terrain of Mars is shown in a photo taken by the Zhurong rover, which landed on the Red Planet on May 15 (image credit: China National Space Administration)

- Sun Zezhou, head designer of the Tianwen 1 probe, said Zhurong has worked very well and its power generation and data transmission were "satisfactory".

- Mission controllers are planning to task Zhurong with some "stress tests" to demonstrate the maximum capability of its equipment and accumulate experience for future robotic adventures on Mars and other planets in the solar system, he said.

- According to the designer, the rover will suspend its operations from mid-September to late-October due to the anticipated disruption of its communications with Earth caused by solar electromagnetic radiation, and will then resume its mission.

- The China National Space Administration announced on Tuesday that Zhurong has outlived its three-month life expectancy with all of its predetermined tasks completed. The 240-kilogram robot is the core component of the Tianwen 1 mission, the country's first interplanetary adventure, and is also the sixth rover on Mars, following five others launched by the United States.

- The 1.85-meter-tall robot, which is now hundreds of millions of kilometers from Earth, will continue carrying out an extended expedition toward an ancient coastal area of Utopia Planitia, a large plain within the largest known impact basin in the solar system, according to a statement from the administration.

- In another development, the China Manned Space Agency announced on Tuesday that astronauts on board the core module of the Tiangong space station will carry out their second extravehicular activity, or spacewalk, in coming days.

- The three astronauts on the Shenzhou XII mission have stayed inside the core module for two months and conducted a host of mission tasks and scientific operations, according to the agency.

• July 24, 2021: China's Mars rover Zhurong has traveled 585 meters on the surface of the red planet as of Friday, according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration (CNSA). 15)

- On July 23 (Friday), the Mars orbiter marked its first anniversary of operation. Now it is about 378 million km away from Earth. The delay of its one-way communication was around 21 minutes, said the center.

- Both the rover and orbiter are working in normal conditions, with their subsystems operating normally.

- China's Tianwen-1 spacecraft, consisting of the orbiter and the rover as well as a lander, was launched on July 23, 2020. The lander carrying the rover touched down in the southern part of Utopia Planitia, a vast plain in the northern hemisphere of Mars, on May 15.

- As of Friday, Zhurong has been operating on the surface of Mars for 68 Martian days. A Martian day is approximately 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth.

- Each Martian day, the navigation terrain camera onboard the rover Zhurong took images of terrains along the way. The subsurface radar and meteorological measuring instrument are also turned on for detection during the journey.

- When the rover stops, the surface magnetic field detector turns on for detection.

- The surface composition detector, multispectral camera and other payloads carry out the fixed-point detection when the rover encounters special landforms, such as rocks and sand dunes with high scientific detection value, during its journey on Mars.

- This week, the rover Zhurong traveled to one of the dunes on its Mars expedition and took images of the dune landscape. Multiple devices also carried out exploration on the dune and its surrounding environment.

• July 15, 2021: China’s Zhurong rover has approached and imaged the parachute and backshell which helped the vehicle land safely on Mars. 16)

- The 240 kg solar-powered Zhurong captured the image of the discarded items on July 12 Beijing time at a distance of 30 meters away.

- Zhurong landed on Mars May 14 after three months in orbit making preparations for its landing attempt.

- The rover has now driven 450 meters in Utopia Planitia as of July 15 Beijing time, according to the China Lunar Exploration Program. The parachute and backshell are located around 350 meters south of the rover’s landing platform.

- The heat shield from the landing sequence is located hundreds of meters further to the southwest. China has not announced a plan for Zhurong’s drive route. NASA’s Opportunity rover imaged its own heat shield back in December 2004.

Figure 12: China's Zhurong images its own parachute from a distance of 30 meters, July 12, 2021 (image credit: CNSA/PEC)
Figure 12: China's Zhurong images its own parachute from a distance of 30 meters, July 12, 2021 (image credit: CNSA/PEC)

- Zhurong has been operating for 60 sols and has a primary mission of 90 sols (92 Earth days). It is currently unknown if Zhurong’s mission will be extended beyond this.

- China’s Tianwen-1 orbiter—which carried Zhurong and entered Mars orbit Feb. 10—is currently in an 8.2-hour orbit, allowing a pass over Utopia Planitia once per sol to help relay data to Earth across hundreds of millions of kilometers of space.

- Zhurong is equipped with six science payloads, including a laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy instrument for analyzing surface elements and minerals, panoramic and multispectral imagers, a climate station, magnetometer and a ground-penetrating radar.

- Peter Grindrod at the Natural History Museum, London, told SpaceNews early June that orbital images of the immediate landing area show nearby bright, linear features that are probably a type of feature called Transverse Aeolian Ridges (TARs) which would be of interest to scientists. Zhurong visited one of these features June 26 (Sol 42) according to CLEP.

- Grindod notes that there are numerous interesting raised mounds in the region, which could be inverted impact craters or possibly small volcanic domes, while some other features could be the result of tectonic activity. Zhurong’s route and ability to access these areas will however depend on science objectives and priorities and the duration of its mission.

Figure 13: An image returned by Zhurong showing a dune and the distant backshell (image credit: CNSA/PEC)
Figure 13: An image returned by Zhurong showing a dune and the distant backshell (image credit: CNSA/PEC)

- Meanwhile China’s Yutu-2 rover is expected to complete its 32nd lunar day July 16 as the sun sets over Von Kármán crater on the lunar far side. The 140 kg solar-powered rover has covered 738.6 meters since landing in January 2019.

- A Chinese science outreach account noted July 13 that Zhurong has covered ground much more quickly than Yutu-2 due to greater autonomy and ability to negotiate obstacles. Yutu-2 is also required to power down for the deep cold of lunar nights and high solar radiation of lunar noons.

• June 27, 2021: China has released landing process footage from its Zhurong rover as well as video and sounds of the vehicle roving on Mars. 17)

Figure 14: A section of a panorama produced by Zhurong, released June 27, showing comms and solar arrays, roving tracks and the distant landing platform (image credit: CNSA/PEC)
Figure 14: A section of a panorama produced by Zhurong, released June 27, showing comms and solar arrays, roving tracks and the distant landing platform (image credit: CNSA/PEC)

- Footage of the entry, descent and landing shows deployment of a supersonic disk-gap-band parachute, separation of the backshell, followed by powered descent, a hazard-avoidance hover phase, and landing.

- CNSA published the footage in a Zhurong mission update early Sunday Beijing time. Video of the descent of the Zhurong rover from its landing platform, including sounds made by the vehicle’s egress, was included in the release.

- The sounds were created by the metal on metal interaction of a rack and pinion system and recorded by Zhurong’s climate station, which intends to capture sounds of Martian winds.

- “With the files we released this time, including those sounds recorded when our Mars rover left the lander, we are able to conduct in-depth analysis to the environment and condition of Mars, for example, the density of the atmosphere on the Mars,” Liu Jizhong, deputy commander of China’s first Mars exploration program, told Chinese media.

- NASA’s Perseverance captured similar sounds of driving on Mars in March.

- The 240 kg Zhurong rover successfully landed in Utopia Planitia on May 14. The deployment took place late May 21 Eastern, following a week-long series of checks and analysis of the environment.

Figure 15: Zhurong’s sounds while descending onto Mars. Zhurong, the Tianwen-1 mission’s rover, has descended from the landing platform to the surface of Mars, in the Utopia Planitia region, on 22 May 2021, at 02:40 UTC (10:40 China Standard Time). According to CNSA: “The sound of the rover’s departure process comes mainly from the driving mechanism, the friction between the wheels and the ramp, and the friction between the wheels and the ground.” Zhurong driving on Mars (no audio): On 1 June 2021, the rover deployed a Wi-Fi camera on the ground a drove away. The camera recorded the rover’s retreat and the turning process. Then, it captured an image of the Zhurong rover and the Tianwen-1 lander from about 10 meters away. Tianwen-1 is China’s first Mars exploration mission with an orbiter, a lander and a rover named Zhurong (video credit: CNSA, Sounds of Zhurong’s descend onto Mars)

- The six-wheeled, solar-powered Zhurong has since covered 236 meters on the Martian surface. An undated panorama shows Zhurong and tracks leading back to the landing platform, along with surface and horizon features.

- Zhurong had earlier dropped a remote WiFi camera when still close to the landing platform. The rover then returned to pose for a joint selfie with the lander. The new update this time featured footage of Zhurong’s drive back to the landing platform and later making a turn.

- “Zhurong Rover is more independent in its driving on Mars [compared with China’s Yutu lunar rovers]. It can judge by itself whether there is a path ahead based on its own image analysis. It will make a judgment about every one meter in its driving, and move towards the target set by the ground,” Jia Yang, deputy chief designer of Tianwen-1 Mars probe, told CCTV.

- The rover is part of the Tianwen-1 mission, China’s first independent interplanetary mission. Consisting of an orbiter, a lander, and a rover, Tianwen-1 launched in July 2020. It entered Mars orbit Feb. 10.

- Zhurong is equipped with six science payloads, including a laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy instrument for analyzing surface elements and minerals, panoramic and multispectral imagers, a climate station, magnetometer and a ground-penetrating radar.

- It aims to return data on potential water-ice deposits, weather, topography and geology, complementing science carried out by missions from other space agencies.

- The Tianwen-1 orbiter is currently in an 8.2-hour orbit, allowing a pass over Utopia Planitia once per sol to perform a data relay role. Zhurong has a primary mission and design lifetime of 90 sols (92 Earth days). It is currently unknown if Zhurong’s mission will be extended beyond this.

- Tianwen-1 carries seven science payloads. It is expected to change to its dedicated science orbit with a period of 7.8 hours after supporting Zhurong.

- The Tianwen-1 mission builds on technologies and capabilities developed through the Chang’e lunar program orbiters, lander and rovers. It also draws on head shielding and parachute expertise from Shenzhou human spaceflight endeavors.

- Meanwhile NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter revealed Zhurong’s progress with images captured with the HiRise camera June 6 and June 11. The images provided evidence of Zhruong’s driving activity in absence of regular updates from CNSA.

Figure 16: China's Zhurong rover (bottom) and landing platform (top) imaged by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (image credit: NASA/JPL/UArizona)
Figure 16: China's Zhurong rover (bottom) and landing platform (top) imaged by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (image credit: NASA/JPL/UArizona)

• June 8, 2021: The China National Space Administration (CNSA) Monday released a new image taken by the Tianwen-1 probe, showing the country's first Mars rover and its landing platform on the red planet's surface. 18)

- In the image, taken by a high-resolution camera installed on the orbiter of Tianwen-1 at 6 p.m. on June 2 (Beijing Time), two bright spots are visible in the upper right corner. The larger one is the landing platform, and the smaller one is the Zhurong Mars rover, the CNSA said.

- China's Tianwen 1 mission, consisting of an orbiter, a lander, and a rover, was launched on July 23, 2020. The lander carrying the rover touched down in the southern part of Utopia Planitia, a vast plain in the northern hemisphere of Mars, on May 15.

- The rover Zhurong drove down from its landing platform to the Martian surface on May 22, starting its exploration of the red planet, and making China the second country after the United States to land and operate a rover on Mars.

- The dark area surrounding the landing platform might be caused by the influence of the engine plume during landing. The symmetrical bright stripes in the north-south direction of the landing platform might be from fine dust when the landing platform emptied the remaining fuel after landing, the CNSA said.

Figure 17: On Monday, CNSA released a new Mars image taken by the Tianwen-1 probe. In this combo photo, the left part is the Martian surface before the lander carrying the rover touched down on the red planet on May 15; and the right part shows the country's first Mars rover and its landing platform on the Martian surface (photo credit: Xinhua)
Figure 17: On Monday, CNSA released a new Mars image taken by the Tianwen-1 probe. In this combo photo, the left part is the Martian surface before the lander carrying the rover touched down on the red planet on May 15; and the right part shows the country's first Mars rover and its landing platform on the Martian surface (photo credit: Xinhua)

- The bright spots in the center of the image are the back cover of the entry capsule and the parachute jettisoned during the landing. Another bright spot in the lower left of the image is the heat shield of the entry capsule, the CNSA said.

- As of June 6, the rover Zhurong has been working on the surface of Mars for 23 Martian days to detect the environment, move around the surface, and carry out scientific exploration. A Martian day is approximately 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth.

- All scientific equipment aboard the rover is turned on to collect data. The orbiter operates in a relay orbit with a cycle of 8.2 hours, providing relay communication for the scientific exploration of the Mars rover.

- The rover Zhurong is named after the god of fire in ancient Chinese mythology. The name echoes with the Chinese name for the red planet, Huoxing (the fire planet), while the name of the mission, Tianwen, means Questions to Heaven. It is the title of a poem by the ancient Chinese poet Qu Yuan (circa 340-278 BC).

- With an expected lifespan of at least 90 Martian days (about three months on Earth), Zhurong will record the Martian landscape with high-resolution three-dimensional images and analyze the material composition of the planet's surface. It will also detect its sub-surface structure and magnetic field, search for traces of ice and observe the surrounding meteorological environment.

- The orbiter, with a design life of one Martian year (about 687 days on Earth), will relay communications for the rover while conducting its own scientific detection operations.

• May 22, 2021: China’s Zhurong rover descended onto the surface of Mars late May 21, a week after the vehicle’s historic landing in Utopia Planitia. 19)

- CNSA (China National Space Administration) announced Saturday that the six-wheeled Zhurong had reached the surface at 10:20 p.m. EDT Friday.

- The rover will now begin science and exploration tasks in Utopia Planitia with six science payloads, including optical and multispectral cameras and ground-penetrating radar.

- Zhurong had been stationed atop a landing platform since its successful May 14 entry, descent and landing.

- The rover carried out automated systems checks and environmental surveying in preparation for deployment.

- China’s Tianwen-1 orbiter, carried the rover to Mars, had altered its orbit Monday in order to relay data from Zhurong to Earth. Low data rates had meant that the first images from Zhurong were not released until May 19.

Figure 18: A rear hazard avoidance camera view from Zhurong after deployment from the lander late May 21 EDT, 2021 (image credit: CNSA/PEC)
Figure 18: A rear hazard avoidance camera view from Zhurong after deployment from the lander late May 21 EDT, 2021 (image credit: CNSA/PEC)

- Zhurong is part of the Tianwen-1 mission and is China’s first independent interplanetary expedition. The spacecraft launched in July 2020 and entered Mars orbit Feb. 10.

- After months of collecting high-resolution imagery to map its landing area, Zhurong targeted an area inside Utopia Planitia, understood to center on coordinates of 110.318º East longitude and 24.748º North latitude, successfully landing at 109.9 East and 25.1º North.

- The rover aims to return data on potential water-ice deposits, weather, topography and geology, complementing science carried out by missions from other space agencies.

- The presence of water ice at the low latitudes of Utopia Planitia could have implications for understandings of potential past or present habitability and was as future crewed Mars missions.

- Zhurong has a design lifetime of 90 days during which the Tianwen-1 will act in a relay role in its current 8.2-hour orbit. The Tianwen-1 orbiter carries seven instruments of its own and is planned to enter a 7.8-hour orbit to carry out its science objectives. It is unknown if the Zhurong mission will be extended and how this will influence the plans for Tianwen-1.

- The Tianwen-1 mission built on technologies and capabilities developed through the Chang’e lunar program orbiters, lander and rovers, as well as head shielding and parachute expertise from Shenzhou human spaceflight endeavors.

Figure 19: A forward hazard avoidance camera view during Zhurong rover deployment onto Mars (image credit: CNSA/PEC)
Figure 19: A forward hazard avoidance camera view during Zhurong rover deployment onto Mars (image credit: CNSA/PEC)

• May 19, 2021: Two photos captured by China's Mars probe Tianwen-1 during and after the country's first landing on the red planet were released by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Wednesday. 20)

- The lander carrying a rover of the Tianwen-1 mission touched down in the southern part of Utopia Planitia, a vast plain on the northern hemisphere of Mars, on May 15, becoming the country's first probe to land on a planet other than Earth.

- The probe also sent back a video taken by a camera on the orbiter, showing how the lander and the rover separated from the orbiter during landing.

Figure 20: The black and white image taken by an obstacle avoidance camera installed in front of the rover of China's Mars probe Tianwen-1 shows that a ramp on the lander has been extended to the surface of Mars. The terrain of the rover's forward direction is clearly visible in the image, and the horizon of Mars appears curved due to the wide-angle lens (image credit: CNSA)
Figure 20: The black and white image taken by an obstacle avoidance camera installed in front of the rover of China's Mars probe Tianwen-1 shows that a ramp on the lander has been extended to the surface of Mars. The terrain of the rover's forward direction is clearly visible in the image, and the horizon of Mars appears curved due to the wide-angle lens (image credit: CNSA)
Figure 21: In the color photo taken by the navigation camera of Tianwen-1 probe towards the rear of the rover, the rover's solar panels and antenna are seen unfolded, and the red soil and rocks on the Martian surface are clearly visible (image credit: CNSA)
Figure 21: In the color photo taken by the navigation camera of Tianwen-1 probe towards the rear of the rover, the rover's solar panels and antenna are seen unfolded, and the red soil and rocks on the Martian surface are clearly visible (image credit: CNSA)

• May 14, 2021: China succeeded with its first planetary landing attempt Friday, safely setting down the solar powered Zhurong rover on the surface of Mars. 21) 22)

- The 240 kg Zhurong rover touched down on the dunes of southern Utopia Planitia at 7:18 p.m. EDT May 14 (corresponding to 11:18 UTC on May 14) after three months of preparations in orbit and around 9 minutes after entry into the Martian atmosphere.

- The critical entry, descent and landing sequences were carried out successfully, with a final hazard avoidance hover phase allowing selection of a safe final landing spot.

- Teams back on Earth will now prepare the rover, named after an ancient fire god, to complete a panoramic image of the landing area, perform systems checks and then descend from its landing platform and onto the Martian soil.

- Thomas Zurbuchen, head of NASA’s science mission directorate, congratulated China on the landing of Zhurong rover.

- “Congratulations to CNSA’s Tianwen 1 team for the successful landing of China’s first Mars exploration rover, Zhurong!” Zurbuchen tweeted. “Together with the global science community, I look forward to the important contributions this mission will make to humanity’s understanding of the Red Planet.”

Figure 22: If all goes according to plan, the Zhurong rover will exit the landing platform down a ramp to begin driving around the unexplored landing site (image credit: CNSA, Spaceflight Now)
Figure 22: If all goes according to plan, the Zhurong rover will exit the landing platform down a ramp to begin driving around the unexplored landing site (image credit: CNSA, Spaceflight Now)

- Tianwen-1 became the first Chinese mission to enter orbit around Mars when it arrived in February, making China the sixth country or space agency to have a probe orbiting the Red Planet, following the United States, the former Soviet Union, the European Space Agency, India, and the United Arab Emirates.

- China jointed an even smaller international club with the Mars landing Friday. Only two nations previously achieved a soft landing on the Red Planet.

- The Soviet Union’s Mars 3 lander was the first spacecraft to perform a soft landing on the Martian surface in December 1971, but the probe stopped transmitting about two minutes later.

- Nine U.S. missions have successfully landed on Mars since 1976.

- In a post on Chinese social media, CNSA said the Zhurong rover started sending telemetry back to Earth after landing on Mars, confirming the robot was alive after touchdown. It was not immediately clear when the first images from Zhurong will come back to Earth.

- The Tianwen 1 orbiter adjusted the low point of its elongated orbit to reach a collision course with Mars in the hours before the rover’s landing, according to amateur radio enthusiasts who track the trajectories of interplanetary space probes. Once ground teams confirm the orbiter is on a good trajectory, the carrier deployed the entry module and fired thrusters to re-establish a stable orbit around Mars.

- Most Mars landers enter the Martian atmosphere on a direct course from Earth. Those trajectories typically have preset landing dates tied to when the missions launched. The design of the Tianwen 1 mission gave Chinese officials flexibility on when to schedule the landing.

- The Tianwen 1 orbiter, which will continue its mission after releasing the lander and rover, is designed to operate for at least one Martian year, or about two years on Earth. The solar-powered rover, standing about 1.8 meters tall, has a life expectancy of at least 90 days, Chinese officials said.

- In addition to mapping and survey duties, the orbiter will relay communications signals between ground controllers in China and the rover exploring the Martian surface.

- Assuming the landing is successful, the rover will activate cameras, a subsurface radar to probe underground water ice, sensors to measure the composition of Martian rocks, a magnetic field monitor, and a weather station to begin collecting data at the Utopia Planitia location.

- The rover will begin an initial 90-day mission to explore and analyze the local area, climate, magnetic field and subsurface.

- The achievement marks complete success for China’s Tianwen-1 mission, the country’s first independent interplanetary expedition which launched in July 2020 and entered Mars orbit Feb. 10.

- China had previously landed on the near and far sides of the moon, in 2013 and 2019 respectively, before completing a complex lunar sample return late last year.

- Zhurong is equipped with six science payloads, including a laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy instrument for analyzing surface elements and minerals, panoramic and multispectral imagers, a climate station, magnetometer and a ground-penetrating radar.

- It aims to return data on potential water-ice deposits, weather, topography and geology, complementing science carried out by missions from other space agencies.

• April 25, 2021: China's first Mars rover has been named Zhurong, announced the China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Saturday, China's Space Day. Zhurong is the god of fire in ancient Chinese mythology, which echoes with the Chinese name of the red planet, Huoxing (meaning the planet of fire).Fire brought warmth and brightness to the ancestors of humankind, and fire lit up human civilization. Naming China's first Mars rover after the god of fire signifies igniting the flame of China's planetary exploration, according to Yanhua Wu, deputy director of the CNSA. Literally, Zhu (meaning wish) expresses the good wishes for humankind's exploration of the universe. Rong (meaning integration and cooperation) reflects China's vision of the peaceful use of space and the building of a community with a shared future for humanity, Wu said. The name is another example of Chinese aerospace workers' scientific romance as they have named spacecraft, including Tianwen, Chang'e and BeiDou, after Chinese traditional culture, which also shows the Chinese people's spirit of exploration and cultural confidence, he said. China launched its Mars probe, Tianwen-1, on July 23, 2020. The spacecraft, consisting of an orbiter, a lander and a rover, entered the parking orbit of Mars on Feb. 24. 23)

- CNSA announced the name of China's first Mars rover in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu Province, on 24 April 2021. (Xinhua/Ji Chunpeng)The global campaign of naming the rover kicked off last July. Netizens (the Chinese word for the English words internet and citizen) at home and abroad were invited to vote for their favorite among 10 candidates from Jan. 20 to Feb. 28.Last month, three possible names emerged, with Zhurong topping the list. In 2016, China set April 24 as the country's Space Day to mark the launch of its first satellite "Dongfanghong-1" into space on April 24, 1970. Nanjing, the capital city of east China's Jiangsu Province, hosted the main events marking this year's Space Day in China. The various activities on Space Day have become a window for the Chinese public and the world to better understand China's aerospace progress.

• March 4, 2021: The China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Thursday published high-resolution images of Mars captured by the country's Tianwen-1 probe. 24)

- These images include two panchromatic images and one color image, according to CNSA (CNSA/Handout via Xinhua).

- The panchromatic images were taken by the high-resolution camera of Tianwen-1 at a distance of 330 to 350 km above the surface of Mars, with a resolution of about 0.7 meters.

- In the images, Martian landforms such as small craters, mountain ridges and dunes are clearly visible. It is estimated that the diameter of the largest impact crater in the images is around 620 meters.

Figure 23: CNSA released on 4 March 2021 high-resolution panchromatic images of Mars captured by the country's Tianwen-1 probe (image credit: CNSA)
Figure 23: CNSA released on 4 March 2021 high-resolution panchromatic images of Mars captured by the country's Tianwen-1 probe (image credit: CNSA)
Figure 24: The second panchromatic image released on 4 March 2021by CNSA, captured by the country's Tianwen-1 probe (image credit: CNSA)
Figure 24: The second panchromatic image released on 4 March 2021by CNSA, captured by the country's Tianwen-1 probe (image credit: CNSA)
Figure 25: The color image of Mars release on 4 March 2021by CNSA, captured by the country's Tianwen-1 probe (image credit: CNSA)
Figure 25: The color image of Mars release on 4 March 2021by CNSA, captured by the country's Tianwen-1 probe (image credit: CNSA)

• February 24, 2021: China's Tianwen 1 robotic probe entered its preset parking orbit above Mars on Wednesday and will fly in this orbit for about three months before releasing its landing capsule, said the China National Space Administration (CNSA). 25)

- The spacecraft, which has entered a crucial stage in China's first interplanetary exploration mission after seven months of lengthy space voyage, conducted its third near-Mars deceleration maneuver at 6:29 am and then moved into an orbit with a perigee of about 280 kilometers, the administration said in a brief statement.

- All of the seven mission payloads on the probe's orbiter will be gradually activated during the probe's three-month stay in the orbit to carry out scientific tasks and also to observe and analyze the landforms and weathers of the optimal landing site, it noted.

- Tianwen 1, the country's first independent Mars mission, was launched by a Long March 5 heavy-lift carrier rocket on July 23 from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province, kicking off the nation's planetary exploration program.

- The 5-metric ton probe, which consists of two major parts - the orbiter and the landing capsule- has flown for 215 days and about 475 million km on its journey to Mars. The average flight speed was about 100,000 km per hour.

- Currently, it is about 212 million km away from Earth, the space administration said.

Figure 26: Illustration of Tianwen 1 probe entering Martian obit (photo provided to China Daily)
Figure 26: Illustration of Tianwen 1 probe entering Martian obit (photo provided to China Daily)

- The Tianwen 1 mission's ultimate goal is to land a rover in May or June on the southern part of Mars' Utopia Planitia-a large plain within Utopia, the largest recognized impact basin in the solar system-to conduct scientific surveys.

- Tianwen 1 is the world's 46th Mars exploration mission since October 1960, when the former Soviet Union launched the first Mars-bound spacecraft. Only 18 of those missions were successful.

• February 15, 2021: China's Tianwen-1 probe on Monday performed an orbital maneuver around Mars after it became the country's first spacecraft to explore an extraterrestrial planet. 26)

- A 3000 N engine was ignited at 5 p.m. (Beijing time) to ensure the probe's trajectory passes the poles of Mars. The periareion, the point in the orbit that is closest to Mars, was adjusted to 265 km, according to CNSA (China National Space Administration).

- The spacecraft will perform several more orbital adjustments to enter a parking orbit, said the CNSA.

- The probe, including an orbiter, a lander and a rover, successfully entered the Mars orbit on Feb. 10 after a nearly seven-month voyage from Earth.

- The lander carrying the rover is expected to land on Mars in May or June. Chinese space engineers and scientists have chosen a relatively flat region in the southern part of Utopia Planitia, a large plain, as a potential landing zone. The rover will be released after landing to conduct scientific exploration.

• February 10, 2021: China’s first interplanetary mission, Tianwen-1, successfully entered Mars orbit Feb. 10 following a 202-day journey through deep space. 27)

- Tianwen-1 initiated a near 15-minute burn of its 3000 N main engine at 6:52 a.m. Eastern (11:52 GMT) allowing the five-ton spacecraft to slow down and be gravitationally captured by Mars.

- The Mars orbit insertion maneuver was designed to place the Tianwen-1 into an elliptical orbit of 400 by 180,000 km inclined by 10 degrees, with an orbital period of 10 days.

- With Mars more than 192 million kilometers away from Earth and a light time delay of 10 minutes and 40 seconds, the braking burn was by necessity pre-programmed. Intervention would not be possible in the event of an issue.

- Tianwen-1 will gradually lower its orbit to allow for observations of Mars. It will also begin preparations for the entry, descent and landing attempt of a 240-kilogram solar powered rover, an event expected to take place around May or June, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp.

- The orbiter is expected to approach as close as 265 km to the surface, allowing a high-resolution camera to return images with a resolution of better than 0.50 meters per pixel.

- This capability will be used to map a targeted rover landing site in Utopia Planitia. Landing coordinates of 110.318 degrees east longitude and 24.748 degrees north latitude had previously appeared in an official Chinese space publication before being removed.

- Tianwen-1 joins the United Arab Emirates’ Hope mission, which arrived Tuesday (9 February), in orbit around the Red Planet. NASA’s Perseverance rover will arrive and make a soft landing attempt Feb. 18.

- Soviet, Japanese and U.S. spacecraft have previously failed at the orbital insertion stage of the mission. The Soviet Mars 4 mission was unable to fire its engines and thus continued past Mars, while NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter in 1999 approached too close, resulting in a mission-ending interaction with the Martian atmosphere.

Water-ice Study Among Science Objectives

- Tianwen-1 is designed to collect an array of diverse data, both from orbit and on the Martian surface.

- Long Xiao, a planetary scientist at the China University of Geosciences, told SpaceNews that Tianwen-1 equipped with a total 13 scientific payloads in to study Martian morphology and topography, study surface regolith and search for water ice with radars, study the composition of surface materials and the characteristics of the ionosphere, climate, environment and magnetic field.

- “The most unique aim is to search and map the distribution of water ice on the surface and subsurface,” says Long. Two sounding radars will operate independently, with one onboard the orbiter. It will conduct a global survey but focus more on polar high latitude regions. The other is on the rover. “As radar data processing and interpretation is very complex, so the ground and satellite radar data together could provide more reliable results than a single one,” says Long.

- Zhang Xiaoping, an associate professor at Macau University of Science and Technology, likewise highlighted the potential of the radar payloads.

- “We want to use the radar system to measure the subsurface structure of the Martian surface, especially for the buried water ice. This would allow us to study not only the underlying geologic structures of Mars, but also the potential source of water ice that supplies long-term human stay,” Zhang told SpaceNews.

- “It is also important to measure the thickness and layers of ice and carbon dioxide in the polar region, to understand the seasonal atmosphere evolutions of Mars. By combining orbital and ground penetrating radar results, we will have a better understanding of the soil structure and evolution in the landing site.”

Figure 27: Tianwen-1 in deep space in October 2020, imaged by a detached camera (image credit: CNSA)
Figure 27: Tianwen-1 in deep space in October 2020, imaged by a detached camera (image credit: CNSA)

Deep Space Journey

- Tianwen-1 launched from Wenchang, south China, July 23, 2020 on a Long March 5 heavy-lift rocket. The new launcher had crucially returned to flight in December 2019, having been grounded for more than 900 days following a 2017 failure.

- The spacecraft carried out four trajectory correction maneuvers to refine its orbit and a larger deep space maneuver to alter its orbital inclination.

- The European Space Agency provided China with support for the Launch and Early Orbit phase (LEOP) and later during Earth-Mars transfer with very precise tracking via Delta-DOR (delta Differential One way Range) measurements campaigns. This was carried out with ESA deep space 35-meter-diameter antennas located in Cebreros, Spain and New Norcia, Western Australia.

- The Tianwen-1 orbiter has a design lifetime of one Martian year, or 687 Earth days. The rover, due to be named through a public vote and subsequent committee decision, has a design lifetime of around 90 Earth days.

- The mission draws on technologies and capabilities developed through the Chang’e lunar program orbiters, lander and rovers, as well as head shielding and parachute expertise from Shenzhou human spaceflight endeavors.

- China is also developing a Mars sample return mission for around 2028-30.

Figure 28: China’s Tianwen-1 Mars rover is shown undergoing thermal vacuum testing in this frame grab from a China Central Television report in 2020 (image credit: CCTV)
Figure 28: China’s Tianwen-1 Mars rover is shown undergoing thermal vacuum testing in this frame grab from a China Central Television report in 2020 (image credit: CCTV)

• February 6, 2021: China's Tianwen-1 probe has sent back its first image of Mars, the national space agency said, as the mission prepares to touch down on the Red Planet later this year. 28)

- The spacecraft, launched in July around the same time as a rival US mission, is expected to enter Mars orbit around February 10.

- The black-and-white photo released late Friday by the CNSA (China National Space Administration) showed geological features including the Schiaparelli crater and the Valles Marineris, a vast stretch of canyons on the Martian surface.

- The photo was taken about 2.2 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Mars, according to CNSA, which said the spacecraft was now 1.1 million kilometers from the planet.

- The robotic craft ignited one of its engines to "make an orbital correction" Friday and was expected to slow down before being "captured by Martian gravity" around February 10, the agency said.

- The five-ton Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a rover that will study the planet's soil.

Figure 29: China's space probe has sent back its first image of Mars and is scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet later this year (image credit: CNSA)
Figure 29: China's space probe has sent back its first image of Mars and is scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet later this year (image credit: CNSA)

- China hopes to ultimately land the rover in May in Utopia, a massive impact basin on Mars.

- After watching the United States and the Soviet Union lead the way during the Cold War, China has poured billions of dollars into its military-led space program.

- It has made huge strides in the past decade, sending a human into space in 2003.

- The Asian powerhouse has laid the groundwork to assemble a space station by 2022 and gain a permanent foothold in Earth orbit.

- But Mars has proved a challenging target so far, with most missions sent by the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and India to the planet since 1960 ending in failure.

- Tianwen-1 is not China's first attempt to reach Mars. - A previous mission with Russia in 2011 ended prematurely as the launch failed.

- China has already sent two rovers to the Moon. With the second, China became the first country to make a successful soft landing on the far side.

- All systems on the Tianwen-1 probe are in "good condition," CNSA said Friday.

Figure 30: Graphic on China's first independent probe to Mars that was launched in July. 2020 (image credit: CASC)
Figure 30: Graphic on China's first independent probe to Mars that was launched in July. 2020 (image credit: CASC)

• January 5, 2021: China's Mars probe Tianwen-1 has traveled more than 400 million km by Sunday (Jan. 3) morning and is expected to enter Mars orbit next month, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA). 29)

- As of 6 a.m. on Sunday (Beijing Time), the Mars probe had flown in space for 163 days. It was about 130 million km from Earth and about 8.3 million km from Mars.

- According to the CNSA, the probe is functioning stably and is scheduled to slow down before entering Mars orbit in more than a month and preparing itself to land on the red planet. Since its launch on July 23, 2020, the Mars probe has captured an image showing both Earth and the moon, as well as taking several selfies. It has carried out three orbital corrections, a deep-space maneuver and self-checks on multiple payloads.

- The Tianwen-1 probe, with a mass of about five tons, consists of an orbiter, a lander and a rover. It is designed to complete orbiting, landing and roving in one mission.

- After entering the Mars orbit, it will spend two to three months surveying potential landing sites, using a high-resolution camera to prepare for the landing in May.

- The most challenging part of the mission will be the soft landing, an autonomous process of the probe lasting seven to eight minutes. The probe will use its aerodynamic shape, parachute and retrorocket to decelerate and buffer legs to touch down.

- After the landing, the rover will be released to conduct scientific exploration with an expected lifespan of at least 90 Martian days (about three months on Earth), and the orbiter, with a design life of one Martian year (about 687 days on Earth), will relay communications for the rover while conducting its own scientific detection.

- Tianwen-1 means Questions to Heaven and comes from a poem written by Qu Yuan (about 340-278 BC), one of the greatest poets of ancient China. The name signifies the Chinese nation's perseverance in pursuing truth and science and exploring nature and the universe, according to the CNSA.

• November 2, 2020: China's Mars probe Tianwen-1 conducted its third orbital correction Wednesday night (28 October), according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA). 30)

- The probe carried out the orbital correction at around 10 pm (Beijing time) with its eight 25N engines working simultaneously. The performance of the 25 N engines was also tested during the operation.

- The orbital correction aims to fine-tune the transfer orbit after the deep-space maneuver, ensuring that the probe achieves a sound planned rendezvous with Mars.

- Launched on July 23, the probe carried out its first orbital correction on Aug 2 and the second one on Sept 20.

- The probe has traveled about 97 days in orbit, flown about 256 million km and is currently 44 million km from the Earth. All probe systems are in good condition, CNSA said.

- Tianwen-1 is designed to complete orbiting, landing and roving in one mission, taking the first step in its planetary exploration of the solar system.

- It is expected to reach the red planet around February 2021. After entering orbit, it will spend another two to three months surveying the candidate landing sites before it touches down.

• October 11, 2020: China's Mars probe Tianwen-1 successfully conducted a deep-space maneuver on Friday night (Beijing time), according to the China National Space Administration. 31)

- The probe completed the maneuver at 11 p.m. after its main engine worked for over 480 seconds.

- The maneuver took place 29.4 million km from Earth, aiming to help the probe achieve a sound rendezvous with Mars.

- Going forward, the probe will travel along the Earth-Mars transfer orbit for about four months and complete two or three mid-course orbital corrections.

• September 14, 2020: China's Mars probe Tianwen-1 has traveled 137 million km, said sources with the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the CNSA (China National Space Administration). 32)

- As of 9 am Friday (11. Sept.), the probe was in stable condition at a distance of more than 15.3 million km away from Earth, according to a center statement.

- The probe captured a photo of Earth and the moon in late July, and completed its first mid-course orbital correction in early August.

- When arriving at Mars in February 2021, the probe will be about 195 million km from Earth with an actual flight distance of 470 million km, said the center.

• August 31, 2020: China's Tianwen-1 Mars probe had traveled 100 million kilometers as of Friday morning (28 August), according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA). 33)

- The administration said in a statement that the spacecraft was in good condition and several of its mission payloads had completed self-examination and sent scientific data back to ground control.

- By Friday morning, the robotic probe had flown about 36 days in an Earth-Mars transfer trajectory toward the red planet, around 10.75 million km from Earth, it added.

- China launched Tianwen 1, the country's first independent Mars mission, on July 23 from Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province, thus beginning the nation's planetary exploration program.

• August 20, 2020: China's Mars probe Tianwen-1 has traveled more than 8 million km away from Earth and is functioning normally, according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration Thursday. 34)

- As of 11:20 pm Wednesday (19 August), the Mars probe has traveled 8.23 million km away from Earth. Starting from 10:20 pm Wednesday, multiple payloads on the Mars probe, including Mars Magnetometer, Mars Mineralogy Spectrometer and High-resolution Camera, have completed self-check to confirm that they are in normal condition.

- Medium and high-resolution cameras will be used for imaging the Mars surface and conducting research on the topography and geological structure of the planet's surface. The Magnetometer will detect the magnetic environment on Mars, and the Mineralogy Spectrometer will be used to analyze the composition and distribution of minerals on Mars.

- The Mars probe is expected to reach the red planet around February 2021. After entering the orbit, it will spend another two to three months surveying the candidate landing sites before landing.

• On July 27 2020, the Tianwen-1 probe captured an image of the Earth and the Moon with its optical navigation instruments from some 1.2 million kilometers away from Earth. 35)

- China has made a lot of preparations for the mission. The Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Center has carried out repeated drills for various systems to support the launch, while the Xi'an Satellite Control Center in northwest China's Shaanxi province has improved the adaptability of the space-ground communication system for the mission.

- Deep-space ground control stations in Kashgar, northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and Jiamusi, northeast China's Heilongjiang province, had been well-prepared to provide support in measurement and control before the launch.

- Meanwhile, two Tianlian satellites, China's tracking and data relay satellite series, had constantly sent telemetry data back to the ground from the geosynchronous orbit.

- The reason why China chose to launch its Tianwen-1 probe to Mars at this time of the year is to take advantage of the Hohmann transfer orbit, which is considered the best route from Earth to Mars. — Proposed in the 1920s by German engineer Walter Hohmann, the Hohmann transfer orbit forms every 26 months and falls in the summer this year.

What’s the Most Difficult Part of the Mars Mission?

- To escape Earth's gravitational field and fly to Mars, an object has to reach the "second cosmic velocity" of about 11.2 km/s. The greater the mass of the object is, the more difficult it is for the object to attain the speed.

- The Tianwen-1 probe, however, weighs about five tons, making it the heaviest deep-space probe ever launched by China.

- This mission marks the first time that Long March-5 carrier rocket exceeds the second cosmic velocity, the fastest China's carrier rockets have gone to date.

- Another problem for the mission lay in the information transmission. The fastest speed at which human beings can transmit information is the speed of light, which is 300,000 km/s.

- However, the distance between Mars and the Earth exceeds 50 million kilometers at the closest and reaches 400 million kilometers at the farthest, which results in an information transfer delay ranging from several minutes to dozens of minutes.

- The delay in information transmission means the Tianwen-1 probe can't be directly controlled by the control center on Earth and needs to deal with the unknown environment in the deep space by itself and make judgments and choices on its own.

What’s the Purpose of the Mars Mission?

- The purpose of the Mars mission is not just reaching Mars, as the real goal is to collect as much effective scientific data as possible, according to Liu Tongjie, spokesperson for China’s Mars probe mission as well as deputy head of the Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center under the China National Space Administration (CNSA).

- The orbiter is equipped with seven instruments and the rover set up with six payloads, Liu added.

- After it landed on Mars, the Tianwen-1 probe will send back images of Mars, investigate the surface and geological structure of the planet, measure and record the climate and magnetic fields, and collect a large amount of scientific data.

Why Mars?

- Mars has similar natural environment with Earth and has always been a priority target for manned deep-space exploration outside the Earth-Moon system, Liu pointed out.

- In previous explorations, human beings have found evidence that suggests the existence of water on Mars.

Figure 31: China's first Mars exploration mission, Tianwen-1, takes a photo of the Earth and Moon at about 1.2 million kilometers from Earth, July 27 (image credit: (China National Space Administration)
Figure 31: China's first Mars exploration mission, Tianwen-1, takes a photo of the Earth and Moon at about 1.2 million kilometers from Earth, July 27 (image credit: (China National Space Administration)

- Since then, whether Mars is hospitable to life and whether it has connections with Earth have become major scientific issues of the research on Mars. The study of Mars is believed to be significant for understanding the evolution of the Earth.

- Representing a starting point of the planetary exploration program in China's aerospace cause, the Mars mission symbolizes China's pursuit of and progress in exploring the deeper space.

- So far, China has established space stations hundreds of kilometers away from the ground, sent spacecrafts to the Moon that is 300,000 kilometers away from the Earth, and started to explore Mars in the deeper space.

- Step by step, China is marching toward farther places in the universe with the exploration spirit and persistent efforts of Chinese astronauts.



 

Sensor Complement

Chinese scientists say the Tianwen-1 mission will perform a global survey of Mars, measuring soil and rock composition, searching for signs of buried water ice, and studying the Martian magnetosphere and atmosphere. The orbiter and rover will also observe Martian weather and probe Mars’s internal structure (Ref. 12).

The orbiter’s seven instruments include:

• Medium-Resolution Camera

• High-Resolution Camera

• Mars-Orbiting Subsurface Exploration Radar. After landing on Mars, China's Tianwen-1 probe will detect the surface and internal structure of the red planet by using its onboard radar equipment. 36)

- A ground-penetrating radar, a key probe instrument, was developed by the Aerospace Information Research Institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is expected to survey the Martian soil and ice, and to collect data about the structure beneath the planet's surface at depths of between 10 and 100 meters.

• Mars Mineralogy Spectrometer

• Mars Magnetometer

• Mars Ion and Neutral Particle Analyzer

• Mars Energetic Particle Analyzer

The Tianwen-1 rover is cocooned inside a heat shield for a fiery descent to the Martian surface. After releasing from the orbiter mothership, the lander will enter the Red Planet’s atmosphere, deploy a parachute, then fire a braking rocket to slow down for landing.

“Tianwen-1 is going to orbit, land and release a rover all on the very first try, and coordinate observations with an orbiter,” Wan, the late chief scientist for China’s Mars program, wrote in Nature Astronomy. “No planetary missions have ever been implemented in this way. If successful, it would signify a major technical breakthrough.

“Scientifically, Tianwen-1 is the most comprehensive mission to investigate the Martian morphology, geology, mineralogy, space environment, and soil and water-ice distribution.”

The rover’s six science payloads include:

• Multispectral Camera

• Terrain Camera

• Mars-Rover Subsurface Exploration Radar

• Mars Surface Composition Detector

• Mars Magnetic Field Detector

• Mars Meteorology Monitor

The rover’s ground-penetrating radar would be one of the first science instruments of its kind to reach the surface of Mars. NASA’s Perseverance rover carries a comparable instrument to scan subsurface layers of the Martian crust in search of water ice deposits.

Tianwen-1 is a Chinese-led project, but scientists and support teams from several countries have agreed to provide assistance on the mission.

Scientists from IRAP (Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie), in France contributed to a Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy instrument on the Tianwen-1 rover.

French scientists, with support from the French space agency CNES, provided guidance to their Chinese counterparts on the spectroscopy technique, which uses a laser to zap a pinhead-size portion of a rock, and a spectrometer to analyze the light given off by plasma generated by the laser’s interaction with the rock’s surface. The technique allows an instrument to determine the chemical make-up of rocks on Mars.

Argentina is home to a Chinese-owned deep space tracking antenna that will be used to communicate with Tianwen 1 after launch. The European Space Agency has agreed to provide communications time for Tianwen 1 on its own worldwide network of deep space tracking stations, and help with the probe’s navigation on the journey to Mars.

China is using a combination of its own tracking antennas and ESA’s global network of ground stations.



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The information compiled and edited in this article was provided by Herbert J. Kramer from his documentation of: ”Observation of the Earth and Its Environment: Survey of Missions and Sensors” (Springer Verlag) as well as many other sources after the publication of the 4th edition in 2002. - Comments and corrections to this article are always welcome for further updates (eoportal@symbios.space).

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