Now it is the early summer, the mainland is in the heating trend, the whole country is getting hot, but we are working on Mars "Zhu Rong" rover is about to usher in the winter of the Mars region, May 6 the National Space Administration released a message that because the working environment of Zhu Rong is very cold, it will start the "winter mode".
As of May 5 this year, the "Zhurong" rover has worked on the surface of Mars for 347 Martian days (a day on Mars, about 40 minutes longer than each day on Earth), a cumulative driving of 1921 meters, it and "Tianwen-1" have accumulated about 940GB of raw scientific data, providing a large number of information material resources for the continent's fire exploration activities and Mars research.
The place where the "Zhurong" rover is active is the utopian plain of the northern hemisphere of Mars, and the landing point is near 26 degrees north latitude of Mars, which is roughly equivalent to the latitude of the mainland Cities of Guiyang and Fuzhou.
Although the latitude is not very high, but because the Mars is originally very cold, now the Zhurong Mars rover instruments show that the highest temperature here at noon is about minus 20 ° C, and at night it will drop to more than minus 100 degrees Celsius, so when winter comes here, the temperature will only be lower, which is not conducive to the work of the Zhurong rover, and in the extreme cold state, the rover work is also prone to problems, so the operators chose to let the Zhurong rover "hibernate" when the energy supply is low, but this "hibernation." "It doesn't sleep all the time, it still works when it has enough energy, and it chooses to sleep when it has less energy.
The operating state of Mars is actually very similar to the earth, its equatorial plane and the ecliptic plane of the sun are not the same, with an angle of about 25 degrees, the earth's axis and the ecliptic plane angle is 23.5 degrees, so Mars in the process of orbiting the sun in the same place in the year also has temperature changes, the angle of light is also different, so Mars also has a year-round (non-ecological) evolution.
After the northern hemisphere of Mars enters the winter, the sunlight tilt heat is less, the length of the light is also shortened, which leads to the rover's solar wing panel power generation capacity is weakened, although the operator has changed the Zhurong Mars rover's solar wing to better face the sunlight, but the power generation is still reduced by a certain extent, so it can only reduce the daily work items and duration to ensure the smooth operation of the Zhurong rover.
This is actually the same as some animals in the middle and high latitudes of our earth will hibernate in winter, in order to reduce energy consumption and danger index in low temperatures, animals in high latitudes on the earth usually have a 3 to 6 months of hibernation, so how long is the "hibernation period" of the Zhurong rover? Or how long does it sleep?
When zhurong first landed on Mars, it coincided with the northern hemisphere of Mars just entering the summer, and now the Zhurong rover has been working on Mars for nearly a year (Earth year), and the northern hemisphere of Mars is moving towards the deep winter period (Mars orbits the sun for 687 Earth days a year), the direct point of the sun moves to the southern hemisphere of Mars, about two months later in mid-July will move near the Tropic of Cancer of Mars, and then the direct point of fire will begin to move north, and it will take more than two months to return to the current latitude.
So Zhu Rong's "winter mode" should last for 4 to 5 months, but it will not be "hibernating" for such a long time, the probability will still be regularly charged and work, and will not always "sleep", but the intensity and duration of work will drop significantly, and in the northern hemisphere of Mars around the winter solstice may enter a longer period of dormancy mode, it is estimated that by October this year, the light conditions in the northern hemisphere of Mars will improve, the temperature will rise, and the Zhu Rong rover will return to normal mode.
Resources:
"Guangming Network" May 7 article "Cumulative driving of nearly 2,000 meters "Zhu Rong" is preparing to "winter" on Mars"
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