IT home May 6 news, according to the China National Space Administration lunar exploration and aerospace engineering center news, at present, the "Zhu Rong" Mars rover in the area has entered winter, similar to our earth, after entering the winter, the northern hemisphere region of the sun's illumination altitude angle decreased, the length of light shortened. According to the measurements, the maximum temperature at noon in the rover has dropped to -20 °C, and the ambient temperature at night has dropped below -100 °C. In addition, due to the presence of dust weather, the light intensity is further weakened, affecting the power generation capacity of the rover solar wing battery array. Recently, the engineering team has rotated the solar wing to adjust the light angle, reduce the number of daily work items and hours, and achieve energy balance.
According to reports, the rotation period of Mars is close to that of the Earth, a Martian day is only about 40 minutes longer than the Earth, and the rotation axis of Mars has an inclination of 25.19 °, which is also very close to the Earth, so Mars also has the same day and night cycle and seasonal changes as the Earth. The orbital period of Mars is about 687 days, that is, 1 Martian year is equivalent to 1.9 Earth years, which means that the average duration of each season of Mars is about twice that of Earth.
When Zhu Rong first landed last year, when Mars ran near the aphelion point, the direct sunlight was in the northern hemisphere, when the northern hemisphere had just entered the summer and the southern hemisphere entered the winter. Now, nearly 1 year after landing on Mars, Mars is running near perihelion, the sun's direct point is in the southern hemisphere, and the northern hemisphere where zhurong is located is entering winter and the southern hemisphere is entering summer.
Over the next two months, the sun's direct point will continue to move toward southern Mars, reaching near the Tropic of Cancer around mid-to-late July, when the northern hemisphere of Mars will enter the coldest season of the year. In order to safely survive the extreme weather such as the cold winter of Mars and sandstorms, the "Zhurong" rover has designed a working mode such as autonomous hibernation, which will automatically enter the dormant mode after the energy is reduced to a certain extent, and then return to normal working mode after the environmental conditions gradually improve.
IT Home learned that the data released by the Lunar Exploration and Aerospace Engineering Center shows that as of May 5, 2022, the "Tianwen-1" orbiter has been in orbit for 651 days and is 240 million kilometers away from the earth, and the "Zhurong" rover has worked on the surface of Mars for 347 Martian days, with a cumulative driving of 1921 meters, and the two have accumulated about 940GB of raw scientific data and are operating normally.
During the ring fire, all 7 payloads carried by the Tianwen-1 orbiter were turned on, and the global remote sensing exploration of Mars continued to be carried out. Figure 1 is an image of a Martian Triole ring crater taken by a high-resolution camera on April 17, 2022, with a resolution of about 0.8 m/pixel, showing the "seasonal slope pattern" on the crater wall. Figure 2 is a local geomorphological image of the Mariner Valley of Mars taken by a medium-resolution camera on April 1, 2022, with a resolution of approximately 65 m/pixel.
Figure 1 The "seasonal slope pattern" of the wall of the Triolet crater on Mars photographed by a high-resolution camera | The picture is from the Lunar Exploration and Aerospace Engineering Center, the same below
▲ Figure 2 Local landform of Martian Sailor Valley taken by a medium-resolution camera
The Zhurong rover completed the scheduled 90 Mars days of rover missions on August 15, 2021, and continued to carry out expanded patrol and exploration missions. Figure 3 shows images of stones distributed near impact craters on the Martian surface taken by a navigation terrain camera on April 10, 2022 (323rd Mars Day after landing).
▲ Figure 3 Image of stones distributed near impact craters on the surface of Mars taken by the Navigation Terrain Camera