The Chinese Tianwen 1 spacecraft – which has been in orbit around Mars since February – will use a descent module to tackle the country’s first landing on the Red Planet in mid-May. Officials plan to share the Mars Rover’s scientific data with researchers around the world, a senior Chinese scientist said last week.
Chinese officials have not announced the exact date for the attempted Mars landing. Tianwen 1 mission managers have more flexibility to set the landing date than officials on other Mars missions.
Tianwen 1 will release its lander and rover from its position in orbit around Mars. Most Marslanders, such as NASA’s Perseverance Rover, enter the Martian atmosphere at a direct rate from Earth. These trajectories usually have predetermined landing dates associated with the start of missions.
Wang Chi, director of the National Space Science Center at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said on March 23 that Tianwen 1’s lander and rover would touch Mars in May.
“The first Chinese Mars mission, Tianwen 1, is now orbiting Mars, and our country in mid-May,” Wang said in a submission to the National Academic Space Studies Council. “We are open to international cooperation, and the data will soon be publicly available.”
The Tianwen 1 spacecraft entered orbit Mars on 10 February and completed an almost seven-month interplanetary journey that began in July last year with a launch on a long-range rocket Long March 5, the most powerful launcher in China’s stock.
The arrival of the Tianwen 1 spacecraft at Mars prompted China to investigate the sixth country or space agency, orbiting the Red Planet, after the United States, the former Soviet Union, the European Space Agency, India and the United Arab Emirates .
Since February 10, the Tianwen 1 spacecraft has been moving in an orbit closer to Mars. The orbit’s current path takes it up to 280 kilometers and up to 59,000 kilometers from Mars. Tianwen 1 completes one orbit around the Red Planet every two or two days.
Tianwen 1 arrives on Mars one day after the UAE’s Hope orbit orbits the Red Planet, and eight days before NASA’s Perseverance Rover lands. The favorable planetary alignment of Earth and Mars that caused the three missions to reach Mars in February occurs once every 26 months.
Tianwen 1’s lander and rover will target a wide plain in the northern hemisphere of Mars called Utopia Planitia.
If China achieves the feat, it will make China the third country to make a soft landing on Mars – after the Soviet Union and the United States – and the second country to drive a robot rover on the Red Planet.
The Tianwen 1 lane, which will continue its mission after releasing the lander and rover, is designed to operate at least one Mars year, or about two years on Earth. The solar-powered Chinese solar worker has six wheels for mobility and has a life expectancy of at least 90 days.
Once the lander and rover are released, the Tianwen 1 lane will adjust its lane to transition to normal science operations. The orbit will also transmit communication signals between land controllers in China and the rover exploring the Martian surface.
The Tianwen 1 robber was boiled in a heat shield for a fiery descent to the surface of Mars. After the lander is released from the orbiter mothership, it will enter the atmosphere of the Red Planet, deploy a parachute and then fire a brake rocket to delay landing.
Assuming the landing is successful, the rover will activate cameras, an underground radar, sensors to measure the composition of Martian rocks, a magnetic field monitor and a weather station to start collecting data at the Utopia Planitia site.
With the recent arrival of China’s Tianwen 1 and the UAE’s Hope missions, there are now eight orbits on Mars.
NASA’s Odyssey spacecraft, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the MAVEN atmospheric observatory are currently sending back data from Mars’ orbit, along with the European Space Agency’s Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, and the Indian Mars Orbiter Mission.
NASA said last week that there had been a “limited exchange” of information with China’s space agency since Tianwen 1’s arrival at the Red Planet to share data about the orbits of Mars orbits. The data initiative is aimed at reducing the risk of collisions between spacecraft operating on Mars, NASA said.
A bill known as the Wolf Amendment prohibits most bilateral cooperation between U.S. and Chinese space programs. The Wolf Amendment was named after former representative Frank Wolf, R-Virginia, who first inserted the language into a NASA budget in 2011.
But the law does not limit all contact between NASA and China’s space agency, provided the proposed cooperation is reviewed by the FBI, and NASA notifies Congress at least 30 days in advance.
The China National Space Administration confirmed in a statement on Wednesday that it had held “working-class meetings” with NASA from January to March on “the exchange of ephemeral data to ensure the flight safety of Mars spacecraft.”
While NASA’s collaboration with China’s space program is limited, other countries have been more involved in Chinese missions such as Tianwen 1.
Scientists from the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, or IRAP, in France, contributed a laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy instrument on the Tianwen 1 rover.
French scientists, with the support of the French space agency CNES, instructed their Chinese counterparts on the spectroscopy technique, which uses a laser to zap a section of a pinhead rock and a spectrometer around the light. analyze what is generated by plasma. by the laser’s interaction with the rock surface.
The technique allows a tool to determine the chemical composition of rocks on Mars. French scientists have also provided China with a calibration target for the Rover’s laser spectroscopy instrument.
The same French team worked on instruments on NASA’s Mars Rovers Curiosity and Perseverance. The scientists hope to cross measurements between the two US-led missions and the Chinese Tianwen 1 rover.
Scientists from the Space Research Institute at the Austrian Academy of Sciences helped develop the magnetometer on the Tianwen 1 orbit and helped calibrate the flight instrument.
Argentina is home to a Chinese space detection antenna used to communicate with Tianwen 1. The European Space Agency has also agreed to provide communication time to Tianwen 1 through its own worldwide network of deep space stations.
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