It is a conversation between the Mars Express probe and the Chinese rover Zhurong

There are currently many rover vehicles and scientific instruments on Mars. Likewise, eight probes are now continuously orbiting the Red Planet. Their goals: to collect as much data as possible to help scientists answer these basic questions: What is geology Mars, what was its history, what the landscape looked like in the past, There was liquid waterIs this planet welcomed life?

Information gathering is going well. On the front line, the rovers take measurements of a very diverse nature, and then transmit the data to their probe via orbiting. This will then act as a relay to transmit the information back to Earth. This is how a Chinese couple works Do Rover Zurong and the Tianwen-1 probe, which is controlled by the Chinese National Space Agency (CNSA). But in a vast and hostile environment like space, scientific cooperation between different countries and especially different space agencies, is essential.

Blind communication between the Chinese rover and the Mars Express probe

Thus in November a series of communication tests between ESA Mars Express probe And the rickshaw Zurong. A successful operation on November 20, but it was not an easy task.

In fact, systems radio The two tools are completely incompatible. While Mars Express is able to receive communications from Zhurong, the reverse is not possible. It is difficult in this configuration to establish a stable link between the rover and the probe in orbit. But don’t bother. On the orders of the Tianwen-1 probe, the rover directed its radio antenna towards the sky and transmitted a blind signal, which was successfully received by the Mars Express probe. So I started a one-way conversation between two tools associated with different tasks. the first ! Thus Zhurong was able to transmit the data, which was transmitted by Mars Express, and it arrived on Earth at the ESA Operations Center. The data was then sent to the teams controlling Zhurong in Beijing, which confirmed its good quality and the success of the operation.

The success of these tests is particularly encouraging for the improvement of cooperation and communication between the various missions conducted away from our land.

March: The huge amount of data collected by the Chinese rover Zhurong is long overdue!

The Chinese rover Zhurong, which arrived last May on the red planet, has collected new data on the surface andAtmosphere March. If the results look promising, the scientific community is waiting for them a long time.

Subject Morgan Gillard Posted on December 1, 2021

Since last May, the Chinese rover Zurong Wandering the plain of Mars in Utopia Planitia, located inNorthern Hemisphere from the planet. Equipped with multiple devices – including cameras and radar system, spectrometer laser and miscellaneous sensors responsible for measuring the temperature, the pressure or strength vent -, robot Keeps collecting new data on weather The geology of Mars. The information is regularly transmitted back to Earth, where several Chinese teams are working on analyzing it.

The results are eagerly awaited by the scientific community

The scientific community is therefore eagerly awaiting the results. because rover It landed in a still unexplored region of the Red Planet and its investigations could provide new data regarding the presence of water or ice under the surface of Mars. Among the expected outcomes, the possibility of sedimentary rocks and the elders volcanoes So mud is of particular interest to planetary scientists around the world because it can indicate the existence of an ancient ocean in the past.

So far, few data However it was passed on to the scientific community, which was impatient to wait for these promising results. Two articles have so far been published in scientific journals. The leading, based on image analysis and friction data between Martian soil and rover wheels, provides an initial overview of the properties of the soil on which it is located. Robot. The Secondly The article analyzes the images sent by the Tianwen-1 probe into orbit with a goal Locate the rover precisely on the surface of Mars. The results are interesting but leave the scientific community unsatisfied. While waiting for the new results to be published, Zhurong continues his exploration, which was not originally planned To work for 3 months only.