Source: Guangzhou Daily
The high-resolution camera captures the image of the "Zhurong" inspection area. Photo/ China National Space Administration
The "selfie" of the rover, with a noticeable dust cover on the surface.
According to Xinhua News Agency (reporter Song Chen) reporter learned from the China National Space Administration on the 24th that the near-fire point of the "Tianwen-1" orbiter recently passed over the rover inspection area again, and took a 0.5-meter resolution image map of the "Zhurong" inspection area, and the driving route of the "Zhurong" Mars rover in the picture was clearly recognizable.
According to reports, as of March 24, 2022, 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 "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.
Martian dust storms will directly affect the energy acquisition of Mars rovers and have 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. This area experienced local sandstorms in February this year, and typical features were covered with a large amount of sand and dust, making it 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 frequent martian dust weather, but at present, no obvious sand and dust weather has been observed in the "Zhurong" inspection area.
The Tianwen-1 orbiter continues to carry out global remote sensing exploration of Mars, focusing on typical geomorphological and geological units such as craters, volcanoes, canyons, and dry riverbeds, and obtaining high-resolution images of them. On March 7 this year, the U.S. Perseverance rover was photographed while imaging jezero impact crater, which is currently located about 200 meters southeast of its landing site.