The name of Zhu Rong, there should be few people who do not know, right? This is the Mars rover of China's Astronomical No. 1 mission, which took out several names at that time, and finally decided to name it with "Zhu Rong", which means that the fire god Zhu Rong landed on Mars. Usually, you may not see it, our Zhu Rong number can be said to be strong and strong, not only weighing about 480 pounds, but also 1.85 meters tall!
Although Zhu Rong's life span is only 3 Martian months, which translates to about 92 days on Earth, as early as August 23, 2021, Zhu Rong spent 100 days on Mars, and the mileage on Mars also exceeded 1000 meters! It should be known that before the Chinese Zhu Rong set foot on Mars, the rover was mainly launched in two countries, one is the former Soviet Union that has not successfully landed on Mars after multiple launches, and the other is the United States, which has already landed multiple rovers on Mars.
It is undeniable that the previous series of Mars exploration activities of the former Soviet Union and the United States have indeed made great contributions to the understanding and understanding of Mars by all mankind:
The first country in the world to launch a Mars rover is the former Soviet Union, as early as 1960, even if it was not successfully launched at that time, but the later launch of Mars 5, but took the first photo of Mars! It was four years after the United States launched the Mariner 3 and 4 probes, and the result was that Mariner 3 failed, but Mariner 4 sent back to Earth many photos that could analyze the composition of the Martian atmosphere.
Of course, everyone knows that there is no "Soviet Union" now, the United States has become one of the world's most eye-catching space powers, starting from the Sodena rover in 1997, to the Pathfinder in 1997, the Rover in 2003, opportunity and courage in 2003, Curiosity in 2009, perseverance rover in 2020, the United States enthusiasm for Mars exploration can be said to have not diminished at all, and even began to plan to land on Mars and establish an immigration base on Mars. At present, the only country in the world that has landed on the moon is also the United States, and it has sent 12 astronauts to the moon six times, which has been more than fifty years.
The American rover is clogged with pebbles! The Perseverance Mars rover can't operate properly, the problem appeared on December 29, why hasn't it been solved yet?
Indeed, the American rover Perseverance did have problems on December 29, and one of the most important missions of Perseverance is to retrieve samples from Mars, and there are also samples that have been collected. However, this time the problem occurred on the equipment related to the sampling process!
To put it simply, there are two big steps to the perseverance sampling, one is to extract the sample from Mars, and the other is to store the Mars sample in the fixed equipment, but the current problem is that the process is not right, because the friction force suffered by the internal sensors of the Perseverance rover has exceeded the normal level. After the problem occurred, the rover turned off the warning message to Earth, but it happened that Earth Day and Mars Day were in a mismatched period, so the information transmission process took another week or so.
After receiving the Perseverance's abnormal alarm, the ground researchers removed the Perseverance drill bit through remote control and took pictures of the inside situation. The problem is obvious, there is a small pile of pebbles clogged inside, and when the rotating structure inside is running, it will prevent the drill from working properly because of falling things. Although the friction of these pebbles is not small, but it is not completely unable to operate, but NASA is still studying how to solve this problem, after all, Mars and Earth are currently 346 million kilometers apart.
The $2.7 billion U.S. Perseverance rover, although it has collected some Martian samples, is not the first time there has been a problem, and it is expected that the earliest time to return to Earth is 2031.
Yes, the United States to develop the Perseverance rover is also a huge amount of money, the purpose is to find out whether there is life on ancient Mars, since humans can not land on Mars for the time being, then take some samples from Mars and bring them back to Earth for research. However, I don't know if you have noticed that the design life of perseverance is not consistent with the expected time to return to Earth!
In fact, NASA's plan is to carry out a joint space mission with the European Space Agency later, and then bring these Mars samples collected by Perseverance back to Earth for study, and the fastest time is 2031.
That is to say, even if the Perseverance rover region has completed some sampling work on Mars, the samples will not have a chance to be sent back to Earth for many years, but as for what the mission will be carried out at that time, it will not be known until that time. Of course, I believe that most people hope that this plan can be implemented smoothly, after all, the Martian samples brought back will certainly help us have a more accurate understanding of Mars, just as we bring back soil from the moon, which will promote the progress of human society.