Zhurong returns first pictures

First drive expected later this month

The Chinese Mars rover Zhurong has returned its first images of its landing site at Utopia Planitia.

Zhurong’s landing site at Utopia Planitia. The rails in the foreground are the tracks down which the rover will drive to reach the surface. Image credit: CNSA/PEC

Early photographs released by the CNSA show a flat landscape with few obstacles, a result that will encourage mission planners anxious to execute successful drives for China’s first interplanetary rover. The landing site is at 109.9E, 25.1N, placing it rather further north than most of NASA’s rover landing sites. As dust devils are less frequent at northerly latitudes, the ‘cleaning events’ that so fortuitously extended the working lives of the MER rovers Spirit and Opportunity in the 2000s cannot be relied upon to clean Zhurong’s solar panels and guarantee adequate electricity generation. For that reason, in addition to overengineering the panels, mission engineers treated each one with a special dust-resistant coating to minimize dust buildup. Two side panels can also be tilted downwards in order to discard unwanted dust.

Zhurong on the Martian surface. Image credit: CNSA/PEC

In the meantime, the Tianwen-1 orbiter has shifted its orbit so as to overfly the landing site three times a day for communications purposes. Zhurong’s first drive is anticipated before the end of the month.