New photos from the ground are out, including from a deployed camera separated from the underneath of the rover:

Source: CNSA / CNSA

These images are really cool. (Source, if the weixin site is loading slowly https://twitter.com/SegerYu/status/1403182448641404932 )

Try here too:

http://www.sastind.gov.cn/n112/n117/c6812121/content.html

A big panorama very slow to load (I had to restart it a few times).

Phil

Had to play with it, just the horizon - notice the parachute to the SSW (north at the top).

Thank you CNSA/CAST.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Wow, I wasn't expecting a family portrait from ground level! Incredible!

Nor the depth of the pit from the landing engineers, far more than Phoenix caused. A property of the soil, or of the landing engines?

One higher power landing engine with small attitude control motors rather than a distribution of many smaller thrusters over the footprint of the lander.

what a great way to start the day! (it's 8 AM here...)

so, it finally looks like there is no camera on the lander

A circular view of the landing site.

Phil

Click to view attachment

There is a camera on the lander, visible in that image on the edge of the lander platform right from the left ramp.

Thank you Phil

CONGRATULATIONS to CNSA/CAST for this mission to Mars and this very successful EDL

Yes indeed: the nearby parachute and its backshell is nice to see ...and look at the big hole dug by the descent engine
Click to view attachment Click to view attachment

Yes indeed, a monitoring camera on the lander. We don't have any of its images and may not get them as it's not a science instrument. The article is a little bit ambiguous but I think it means that the camera was used to watch the deployment of solar panels and so on, while the rover was still on the lander (and to confirm safe landing), but not that it was used after rover egress from the lander.

Phil

I'm just getting 404 errors. Is there another place I can find the panorama?

And one Zhurong/Lander easter egg... Beijing 22 Winter Olympics.

It apears the initial turn of Zhurong seens to be colecting PCAM images in a 360o way, to make precise 3d models like on chang'e-4, doesn't look like a simple turn of direction.

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-06-11/China...b6c2d58e1f.jpeg

According to CCTV, the photos were taken at:

Panorama: May 18 & 20, 23:00-00:00 UTC
East close-up: May 23, 02:37 UTC
Lander side view: May 26, ~04:00 UTC
Deployed camera rover-lander photo: June 1, 08:09 UTC

The rover has travelled over 80 m so far.

https://9ifly.spacety.com/forum.php?mod=red...p;fromuid=19646

The camera-taken "family photo" is so much nicer than the distorted images
stitched together from the robot arm on Curiosity, or even the aerial photos
from Ingenuity. Well, maybe the future fetch rover can get some good shots.

Lucky for them, the camera ended up pointing in the right direction for a group selfie.
When you eject something from your vehicle to the ground, you only have so much
attitude control.

At 0* and 180* azimuth on the 360 pan you can see scoured areas from the jet of the descent rocket. That would be interesting to examine, although with it's no longer chemically pristine.

Nice constrast on jet path.

"But it's almost certain that it will run into extreme weather conditions like sandstorms,"

On the image of the lander, if we use only the red channel and change its contrast we get a event on the west and a more clean sky at east. I don't known if it is just heat, sun shine or a dust plume, but it is distinguishbly on the red and don't exist on green and blue channels, mabe indicating a dust plume (Mabe a little sand storm). it exists on the panoramic picture as well and still a west feature. On panoramic image is a contrast of Red minus Blue.

Yes, Zuhrong is coreographing a precise series of movements. Impressive.
One nearby feature to visit would be one of those curious arc-shaped wind tails behind light-toned boulders (apparently, at the HiRISE resolution images of the landing site). My initial thought was that these were simply barchan dunes, but they may not be that.

Yes indeed, but not forgetting also the backshell + the heatshield (both located at southwest), if the Chinese engineers want to make an full technical assessment of the behaviour of their components during EDL (very much like the technical visit made during the Opportunity mission).
This kind of technical visit is not recommended for the Perseverance mission which must avoid the contamination of the suite of instruments that seek the traces of past life.
But the Chinese have not the same scientific constraints
...and such visits would provide spectacular images they will like to share worldwide to impress people about their mastering of difficult space exploration techniques

That was no luck. The Chinese knew exactly what they were doing! Kudos to them for the group portrait. It's nice to see such pristine solar panels, and it will be interesting to see if their dust mitigation strategies work.

Perhaps we'll get a closer look. From this CGTN article (which contains a number of other interesting bits:

I agree that the Chinese know what they are doing. The point I was trying to make is that, if you let something free-fall even a short distance to the ground, there is always the chance that it will end up in an undesired attitude. But perhaps the camera was not simply dropped to the ground as, for instance, Ingenuity was a while ago and I would not be at all surprised to find out the mission engineers worked out a more deterministic way to deploy that camera.

Mabe a deployable arm? Again i could be wrong. 释 (release), link. In anycase if its the same feature on her twin, the camera is lower on a easy position to release: link. 释 in some sentence i get put instead of release... online translation, not by me.

There's a new article on Zhurong's future plans: Link - "Mars rover to move south after testing"

Zhurong will move southwards to observe and survey mud volcanoes and troughs. I hope this mission lasts well beyond its 90-day design, just like Opportunity and Spirit

Chinese versions of this story included illustrations of features to visit. I can't find the links now but I will make my own version.


EDIT: This is the link:

https://news.have8.tv/2863778.html


Phil

I added a synthetic sky on post-processing so that landing site panorama can be explored in VR.

This is the future path suggested in the Chinese media. It visits two substantial impact craters, takes a look at the parachute and crosses a valley floor with a chance that the radar will be able to probe its structure and origin. Notably it does not access any of the 'mud volcanoes'. The most accessible candidate is about 3 km NNW of the lander. There are others to the south and west but still several kilometres beyond Crater B. Incidentally, 'Crater A' and 'Crater B' are the designations they use (with a Chinese word for crater but with Roman letters 'A' and 'B'). Maybe we will see names for them later.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Thanks so much Neo56 for this superb work!
Now, the Zhurong-1 site becomes a real place that can be explored

Thanks so much Phil for this very informative map

Btw, this is exactly the mission we dreamed of during the Viking times: having a lander with a rover on top of it that is released and comes exploring the surface of Mars. Unfortunately, this Viking III (or Viking'79 or Viking'84) mission was not funded. Fortunately, however, the goals were fulfilled with the rover missions sent to Mars in the next decades, starting with Mars Pathfinder and Sojourner in 1997
Click to view attachment
(Note. One of the Viking III versions is shown here: many variants were studied)

Zhurong's Lander Black box. They don't trusted on the success of the landing. The black box would help understand the crash.

Wang Yin said: “The Mars Rover beacon device is the world’s first emergency communication payload for spacecraft applications. Its main function is similar to that of the black box on the plane, but it is different. The black box on the plane cannot actively transmit data. , Can only send a positioning signal to be searched. The beacon device can send some key data and signals, which are received by the Martian orbiter, and the key data can be interpreted."

http://www.js.chinanews.com/news/2021/0517/203760.html

"The picture shows the development team of the Mars rover emergency beacon device"

Touch Space
Insight Into Space
Change Space

Loved the third... To Construct on Space appears to be the Final Objective.

This is a very weird translation of 进入, which is a common word meaning "enter". You might find 请勿进入 written on a door, for example, meaning "do not enter".

http://www.chinanews.com/ga/shipin/cns/202...ews890629.shtml
Rong Qiliang Interview about Zhurong's "火星相机 Mars Camera" or?? "Fire Monitoring Camera".
"we all hope to apply our developed space technology to civilian use. We have all begun to do a lot of work in this area."
Mabe in the future we will have more COTS instruments used in space exploration.
Same team developing the camera since Chang'e3...

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01588-6
(Wasn't only me impressed with Hirise image...)

Very complete video explaning key developments done for Tianwen-1 mission:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIA9r5IAIsE

This link to a Chinese forum page:

https://9ifly.spacety.com/thread-91970-61-1.html

shows a frame from an EDL video of the Tianwen-1 parachute.

This link:

https://wx2.sinaimg.cn/mw1024/9da82ba5gy1gr...g20m80cikjw.gif

is to the video!

Phil

I get this 403 Forbidden error.
You don't have permission to access the URL on this server.

Twiter link - Parachute video

New Hirise Image, Zhurong going South. Now the Track is clearly visible. Hirise is simplifying the job of mapping Zhurong path...
https://twitter.com/AJ_FI/status/1408108865728794625

Zhurong clearly paid a visit to a stone on its path, before continuing south.

Other link to Lander Parachute Opening:https://m.weibo.cn/status/4651233694713565?

The second HiRISE image is here : https://www.uahirise.org/ESP_069731_2055

And here we have a video of the separation of Zhurong from the aeroshell. You can see the aerodynamic plate pop out of the side of the aeroshell after deployment to slow down the aeroshell, helping avoid it crashing into the lander.

https://twitter.com/Kaynouky/status/1408159315987423246

You got a source for that? It appears to already be fully deployed when the video starts. I believe it deployed before parachute deployment as an aero trim flap

https://twitter.com/TheElegant055/status/13...0970885/photo/1

https://twitter.com/CoreGraphite/status/1287020151288868865

Showing up on the Chinese 9ifly forum, a different image by the little deployed camera - you can see the lander behind the rover (ignore the red box, it's a mistake).

Phil

Click to view attachment

https://9ifly.spacety.com/thread-91970-63-1.html

You might be right! What I wrote was how I interpreted the "video," but I'm not so sure now. Changing viewing geometry could explain why it appears to come better into view.

This tweet contains a view from some conference where it looks like these EDL cam videos are being presented. While the "recording of the recording" isn't that great of quality, after the Aeroshell separation video that we've now seen, we then see what looks like a downward-looking camera viewing the surface(? and a couple craters are visible?).
https://twitter.com/SegerYu/status/1408086543177187330

Could the red box be interpreted to show how the lower frame was cropped after the rover moved to a new position ? The lower position seems to be designed for the group photo so that both rover and lander appear next to each other, after the rover backed away further from the camera.

The person who posted the image thought that the released group photo was cropped from a larger frame (which may have been true) and thought that the new image was just that larger frame. But comparison of the images shows clearly that they are different images.

Phil

Mabe from another camera, it apears to me that we have two cameras on the released body (the visible two lens on the Zhurong engineering twin). Mabe one with better resolution and other with small resolution just to help position Zhurong before the higher resolution one is used.

This might be the full EDL video. Though the landing video includes so few frames it's somewhat surprising if it is the full video. In any event, it's the clearest version of the landing video yet and we also see parachute deployment from a second upward-facing camera. We also get a longer video of the upward facing camera that monitored aeroshell separation.

https://twitter.com/raz_liu/status/1408958199764455427

Attached are the final three frames of the video, and the only ones that show the descent engine affecting the surface.

Perhaps I should have waited: here is the full-resolution version of the video in the past post.
https://t.co/UNtMGNl1xI?amp=1

It also contains audio recordings of Zhurong driving down the ramp.

A video from the deployed camera showing Zhurong backing away(!!! ! )

A panorama of the view from Zhurong after its southward drive commenced.

See here as well!

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ueCzF5pH6Y0kwEVwLRtfWA

Phil

Can't resist doing this...

Phil

Click to view attachment

(EDIT: should be rotated about 10 degrees counterclockwise)