I would interpret that "mud pit site" as a sediment-filled channel. A great subject for their ground-penerating radar.

--Bill

Probably water or any kind of liquid are long gone, even on high depths, it's one thing i don't understand, there are two big goals to achieve on Mars. Water and Lava tunnels to use for a colony. The only reason i believe we didn't land near it is because we are deeply afraid of failure. We need to try, put a rover on Mars ice cap and start thinking on explore lava tunnels.

Couple things here:

1. Almost ALL the surface features on Mars are billions of years old. Utopia is no exception, and these "mud volcanoes" are ancient. If these features are in fact artifacts from a past channel then obviously it would be of interest as a geological objective.

2. NASA follows planetary protection protocols (PPPs) to minimize the possibility of terrestrial contamination of sites of potential biological interest, which is a major constraint on site selection. Zhurong, as a first effort by CNSA, was almost certainly targeted to Utopia primarily as the best accessible site with the least amount of landing risk.

3. Encourage all to please stay on topic and to periodically review the Forum Rules & Guidelines section.

This link goes to an open access paper on China's planetary data system. It includes maps of the Yutu 2 and Zhurong paths.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-021-00862-3

Phil

Open access paper in Nature about the geomorphology of the landing area and possible targets for study.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-021-01519-5#Sec5

Phil

Thank you so much Phil for keeping us informed about this much interesting mission

Another open access paper:

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/14/1/8

This paper in Remote Sensing is about dust storms and landing plans, with some results from the wide angle camera on the orbiter.

Phil

Thank you so much Phil

A new image from the end of the year (I assume) is found here:

http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/n6759533/c6813038/content.html

This is a projected version which allows the location to be pinpointed - see the map thread.

Click to view attachment

Phil

Has there been any information released about dust accumulation on Zhurong's solar panels?

It's not clear if the storm activity has made it that far north yet:
https://www.msss.com/msss_images/2022/01/12/

Not much news lately. But here is a link to an LPSC abstract with a map:


http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2022/pdf/1381.pdf


The map - if you zoom in - shows the points where the LIBS laser was used for analysis. The map is the same one released last November, but I am puzzled by two areas where the path seems to divert from the older map. They show up as red lines, and one in particular (an excursion to the east at a large drift) seems at odds with the previous map and the Tianwen-1 orbiter image released last fall. I really want to see a new HiRISE image before I decide exactly what my map should look like.

Phil

https://twitter.com/TheElegant055/status/1501762584386711557

Latest map of Zhurong's progress retweeted by Andrew Jones. It's been slow. I hope that means quite a lot of analysis and observation done along the way.

Phil

Slow is good. Slow ensures that the image I took of it in mid-January with CaSSIS will actually include the rover.

Some 22 names added to the nomenclature by the IAU.

John

Good progress. I am still impressed with their hazard avoidance on the skillful daily drives or with the efficient Autonav routines.

John, are those new place names shown on a map at IAU?

--Bill

See our map thread, post #35, for the locations of named features.

Phil

The map Phil references is indeed at #35, and clicking on their names (in the IAU page link above) brings them up individually on a map.

John

If you look at the IAU map of names in that area (http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/images/mc14_2014.pdf), it is not updated yet. But you will notice that it has an unusually dense set of crater names (mostly southwest of the TW1 landing site). That is because the area with many names was a candidate Viking site called Amenthes.

Phil

Story about relatively recent hydrated minerals in Utopia Planitia written on the CNN website:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/11/world/mars-w...-scn/index.html

Related journal article is here:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abn8555

Apparently the weather has not been kind to Zhurong. The May 6 update reported that the rover's solar arrays have been tilted up to increase sun exposure and the rover's activities scaled back to preserve power. Today, People's Daily reports that Zhurong has entered a hibernation mode and is expected to come out of it in December.

Here's some images from a CCTV documentary about Zhurong that we haven't yet seen which appear to document various deployments of solar arrays, the mast(?), and the deployable camera. There also appears to be a video of the use of the LIBS instrument here.

Bringing the Thread about 'roving pebbles' started at Tianwen orbiter to Zhurong forum:

CSNA released new images from Tianwen and 1 new image from Zhurong:
http://www.chinanews.com.cn/gn/2022/06-29/9791303.shtml

On the image is possible so see recent material random moviment, due to it's tiny size and little exposition to dust. By now, probably, wind action over light material, eject dust from impact or erosion of the dune.

Eject: It has peebles without traces and some exactly on the same traces... so i believe it is not eject dust from impact... only if very light material that would fall and break generating these patterns...
Erosion: i can't get why peebles apears on the same tracks and without track, it don't looks right.
Wind action: Can't figure peebles at same tracks. and with so different directions...

Only i can say is, the mostly i look, i less understand it....

Mabe some kind of rising or condensation of material?? They go up or group together due of some composition on this exact dune. Still didn't explain some paths,.. but would explain peebles on same path and without path.... Im thinking about the environment, this is a almost vacuum low gravity atmosphere,...

New CCTV's "Painting Learning" from space exploration... here follows the one about Tianwen/Zhurong...

http://www.chinanews.com.cn/gn/2022/07-24/9810981.shtml

Google translation:

The Tianwen-1 probe landed on Mars, taking an important step in my country's interstellar exploration journey, realizing the leap from the Earth-Moon system to the interplanetary system, and leaving the Chinese imprint on Mars for the first time. Another milestone in development.

"Heavenly Questions" comes from Qu Yuan's long poem "Heavenly Questions". In the poem, Qu Yuan raised more than 170 questions, including the rising and setting of the sun and the moon, and the shape and position of the moon and stars. The Mars probe is named "Tianwen", so that the pursuit of the ancients echoes the exploration of today's people.

God, the first Mars rover is named "Zhu Rong", which means to ignite me.

The fire of interstellar exploration in the country guides mankind's continuous exploration and self-transcendence of the vast starry sky and the unknown of the universe.

No news yet but some time in the coming weeks we might see Zhurong operate again after its winter break, if it survived the cold season.

Phil

Spoke too soon. Here is a bit of news:

https://moon.bao.ac.cn/web/enmanager/dtxw?detailId=821602

(in Chinese, but here is a Google translation):

----------
On May 15, 2021 , Tianwen-1 successfully landed in the southern part of the Utopia Plain of Mars, leaving China's mark on Mars for the first time. As the first mission of China's planetary exploration project, Tianwen-1 has realized China's space exploration from the Earth-Moon system to the The interplanetary leap, the first time in the world to complete the orbiting, landing, and patrolling of Mars through a single mission, is another milestone in the development of China's aerospace industry. At present, Tianwen-1 has landed on Mars for more than a year, and the "Zhurong" rover and orbiter have carried out various scientific explorations as planned and are in good condition.

At present, the Mars rover inspection area has entered winter. The highest temperature during the day is below minus 20°C, and the minimum temperature at night is down to minus 100°C. By mid-July, around the Martian solstice, the temperature will drop further. In order to cope with the reduction in the power generation capacity of the solar wing caused by the dusty weather and the extremely low ambient temperature in winter, according to the design plan and flight control strategy, the rover went into sleep mode on May 18. It is expected that around December this year, the "Zhurong" inspection area will enter the early spring season, and will resume normal work after the environmental conditions improve.

The orbiter is carrying out remote sensing exploration of the global coverage of Mars. The current imaging area is mainly concentrated in the high latitudes of the southern hemisphere of Mars. The mission team will use the orbiter as much as possible to continue to monitor local weather conditions.
----------

So we have to wait until late in the year for the return of Zhurong. But at least they expect it to resume operations.

Phil

http://www.chinanews.com.cn/gn/2022/09-26/9861080.shtml
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05147-5

Publication in September 26 on Nature about the in situ ground-penetrating radar survey of Martian subsurface structure made by Zhurong.

It didn't found water within 80 meters below the surface. They still are interested on the mud volcanos... sugesting mabe a target for the rover.

The article provided links to request access for raw data:
It has more then 800 GB of raw data in 14 releases till now.

https://clpds.bao.ac.cn/web/enmanager/mars1
https://doi.org/10.12197/2022GA018
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05147-5#Sec13

Submited but can't get anything. Probably is restrict for chinese public.
If anyone manage to, would be nice other high resolution image of the "rolling stones"...

Thanks Huguet. Same for me: data is still not available and stated as "Acquisition within protection period", meaning that it is still under embargo

Hi, any news about chinese rover? It should be back to operation by now....

Not yet but hoping for news soon.

Phil

New post about the State Key Laboratory of Solar Activity and Space Weather, Lunar and Planetary exploration team.
But it is just a photo of the meeting.
The foreground image appears to be new.
RGB Channels are diferent from the released ones.
http://www.chinanews.com.cn/gn/2023/01-01/9925626.shtml

SCMP has an article suggesting some concern that the rover has not yet awakened, as well as a plan to have Tianwen-1 image it from orbit to check on it -- at least that's the part of the article that I can see before the paywall.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/art...ate-sources-say

Apears a problem with dust on the solar panels:

“It’s not hard to imagine that after a harsh sandstorm season, Zhurong is now probably all covered in the reddish Martian dust.”
"To make matters worse, solar radiation during the winter also dropped to a low level, further hampering the rover’s power supply."

"According to Jia Yang, deputy chief designer of the Tianwen-1 probe system, the rover is designed to wake up automatically when two conditions are met: its power level must hit 140 watts and the temperature of key components, batteries included, must exceed minus 15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit)."

We were told at some point that the solar arrays were raised to help with this. Do we know that power generation is actually the problem here? I feel like we just know so little at the moment. Observations from orbit would help clarify this (as was done for MER to check solar array dust cover).

Appears to me, by the last looks of the antenna and the change of colours at the track, that the dust somehow cover everywhere like a dense film...
Probably would be best to consider a active way or arm for the rover to periodicaly clean itself...

https://phys.org/news/2023-02-complex-subsu...ed-chinese.html

Nice article on the ground-penetrating radar on Zhurong. The paper it describes is behind a paywall (though not for me) but its supplementary data file is not (and this is true for supplementary files for many papers, so well worth checking out). Here's a link:

https://ndownloader.figstatic.com/files/38843295



Phil

HiPOD 21 Feb 2023: Monitoring the Zhurong Rover:

The Chinese Zhurong rover has been on Mars since 14 May 2021, and MRO/HiRISE has imaged it several times to track its progress and monitor the surface for changes.

This cutout is from three images acquired in 2022 and 2023. The rover is the dark and relatively bluish feature visible in the upper middle of the first (left) image and lower middle of the other two images. This time series shows that the rover has not changed its position between 8 September 2022 and 7 February 2023.

ID: ESP_077511_2055, date: 7 February 2023, altitude: 286 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_077511_2055

NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona

Click to view attachment

Zhurong was supposed to revive from hibernation in December 2022.
Possibly, RIP?

--Bill

I think so Bill, for me it didn't get enough power from the dust panels to continue working... I believe future missions must have a more active way of cleaning it..

Here some pictures released of the parachute test made on Earth... and the pics we have from Mars for comparation...

It was still an absolutely brilliant mission. Especially considering it was China's first Mars landing.

--Bill

Probably by september 2022 they already know that Zhurong would not be capable of continuing operations. That's why they change Tianwen purpose.

Zhang Rongqiao, chief designer of Tianwen-1 mission, tells CCTV that dust accumulation is the probable cause of the rover not waking. 20% dust coverage will cause issue, 30% requires strongest lighting conditions to reawaken, while 40% means game over, never waking up.
Here is the tweeter link from Andrew Jones : https://twitter.com/aj_fi/status/1650725085...-abbFuRwORcPCqQ
He added « Good to have an official update. So, this is not conclusive. Hard to gauge dust coverage on Zhurong's solar panels from orbit. Could still wake up, with summer solstice but until July 12 . If it can wake up, it can use active dust cleaning measures. It could already be doomed tho »

Thank you very much Climber for the news

About 800 images from Zhurong have been released and converted into .jpg format, though I haven't quite figured out where to get them yet.
https://twitter.com/CNSpaceflight/status/1652185114078769152

Even if it is too late to use them, it would be interesting to know what kind of active measures were considered.

I've posted details of the 800 image drop here : https://deepspace.social/@doug_ellison/110291433371702521

I literally ended up using a mouse-record-and-replay tool to hit 'download' on each of the 5 products per page, then hitting next page and let it repeat for ~160 pages

Seems like ~14 360 mosaics over ~5 months were taken - with 3x1 mosaics for drive direction for a few steps in-between each 360

Attached - a bunch of them at ~1/3rd res - full size I've posted here : https://dougellison.smugmug.com/Zhurong-Panoramas/

Outstanding work! I don't suppose you could be persuaded to post the entirety of it somewhere accessible for the rest of us?

I guess they don't come with time stamps, but the first one shows the lander up close, so likely the order in which they were acquired matches the order in which Doug has posted them. In 53139 it looks as though there is a second man-made object on the horizon, to the far left. It seems to have some rigidity, so unlikely to be a parachute. What then could it be?