CCTV news: The China National Space Administration today (March 24) released a number of high-resolution images of the inspection area recently taken by the "Tianwen-1" orbiter, as well as a number of latest Mars image maps such as the "Zhurong" Mars rover selfie. As of the 24th, the "Zhurong" rover has worked on the surface of Mars for 306 Martian days, with a total of 1784 meters, and the "Tianwen-1" orbiter has been in orbit for 609 days, 277 million kilometers away from the earth, and the current two are operating normally.
The high-resolution camera captures the image of the "Zhurong" inspection area
This is a 0.5-meter resolution image of the "Zhurong" rover inspection area taken by the "Tianwen-1" orbiter when it passed over the rover inspection area a few days ago, and the driving route of the "Zhurong" rover in the picture is clearly recognizable.
The "Zhu Rong" rover also transmitted selfies from the surface of Mars, compared with the photos taken when it just landed, it can be seen that the surface of the rover has accumulated a thin layer of sand dust. At the same time, judging by the telemetry information of the Mars rover, the power generation efficiency of the solar wing has been affected to a certain extent, but the energy is still sufficient. In order to cope with the dust cover, the rover solar wing has been specially designed to take a variety of measures to deal with the decline in power generation efficiency caused by sand and dust, which is not currently needed, and the current energy state is enough to support the rover to continue to drive and carry out exploration.
This is the wind and sand activity in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere of Mars taken by the medium-resolution camera of the "Tianwen-1" orbiter. According to reports, martian dust storms will directly affect the energy acquisition of mars rovers, which has been attracting much attention. The engineering team continued to monitor Martian dust weather through images obtained by the medium resolution camera of the Tianwen-1 orbiter, and found that since late January this year, there has been a significant aeolian sand activity in the area north of 60° north latitude of Mars. As can be seen from the figure, there was a local sandstorm in this area in February this year, and the typical features were covered with a large amount of sand and dust, which was difficult to distinguish.
At present, the northern hemisphere of Mars has begun to enter autumn. According to the analysis of previous exploration data, autumn is the season of martian dust weather, and it can be seen from the medium-resolution images taken by the "Tianwen-1" orbiter that no obvious sand and dust weather has been observed in the "Zhurong" inspection area.
The American "Perseverance" rover photographed by "Tianwen-1"
The Tianwen-1 orbiter continues to carry out global remote sensing exploration of Mars, and on March 7 this year, during the imaging of the Jezero impact crater, it photographed the American Perseverance rover, which is currently located about 200 meters southeast of its landing site.
Source: CCTV