The ambitious mission of the Tianwen-1 rover is the very first entirely Chinese on Mars. The probe was launched yesterday in the direction of the red planet. His journey will last 7 months before reaching Mars.
The ambitious Tianwen-1 mission was launched on a Long March 5 rocket from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island yesterday morning (July 23, 2020) at 12:41 a.m. EDT (6:41 a.m. EDT). Tianwen-1 is due to arrive near Mars in February 2021 and settle on a orbit elliptical with a perigee 265 kilometers away and one apogee some 12,000 kilometers away. Then, the landing of the rover is scheduled for April in Utopia Planitia, a vast plain located on the northern hemisphere of Mars.
Tianwen-1 consists of an orbiter and a lander / rover duo: a combination of contraptions that had never been launched together towards the Red Planet.
#Tianwen1, #China‘s first #Mars probe mission, if successful, would also mark a first in human history as it aims to achieve orbiting, landing and roving all in one go. pic.twitter.com/kzCBMIpJqx
— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) July 23, 2020
A space mission deemed ambitious
Tianwen-1 has a real technical heritage from the Chinese lunar exploration program. As we recall, China currently has three probes and two rovers on the Moon, one of which is currently active on the far side of the latter. That said, and even with an undeniable technological advance, the Chinese space missions concerning the red planet, have not been very successful lately. Indeed, of the forty missions launched to Mars since the very beginning of the space conquest, more than half have failed.
A Chinese Long March 5 rocket launches the Chinese National Space Administration’s Tianwen-1 rover, lander and orbiter from the Wenchang satellite launch center on Hainan Island on July 23, 2020. Credits: CCTV / China National Space Agency
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Crédits : CCTV/China National Space Agency
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Crédits : CCTV/China National Space Agency
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Crédits : CCTV/China National Space Agency
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As a result, the Tianwen-1 mission is particularly striking, given that it is China’s first kickoff for a full mission to Mars. Namely, the nation launched an orbiter to the red planet called Yinghuo-1 in November 2011, but the spacecraft flew on the back of the Russian Phobos-Grunt mission. In addition, this launch had failed, leaving the probes trapped in Earth orbit.
The Tianwen-1 orbiter, rover and lander, separated from their Long March 5 rocket after a successful launch on July 23, 2020. Credits: CCTV / China National Space Agency
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Crédits : CCTV/China National Space Agency
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« Tianwen-1 will go into orbit, land and release a rover, all at once, and coordinate observations with an orbiter The team members wrote, describing the main objectives of the mission. ” No planetary mission has ever been implemented in this way. If successful, it would mean a major technical breakthrough », They added.
This screenshot from a CCTV camera broadcast shows a depiction of the Tianwen-1 orbiter-rover-lander after it separated from the spacecraft and deployed the solar panel, July 23, 2020. Credits: CCTV / China National Space Agency
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Take precise measurements
If all goes as planned, Tianwen-1 will arrive on the Red Planet in February 2021. The lander / rover pair will touch the Martian surface two to three months later, somewhere in the region of Utopia Planitia, a large plain in the northern hemisphere, which also hosted NASA’s Viking 2 lander in 1976.
The solar-powered rover will then spend around 90 Martian days (known as soils) studying its surroundings in detail. It will do this with six different scientific instruments, which the researchers describe as a multispectral camera, a field camera, a subterranean exploration radar, a Martian surface composition detector, a magnetic field detector as well as a field monitor. meteorology. Then, the orbiter will eventually settle in a polar elliptical orbit that will position it near the Martian surface, about 265 kilometers (closest) and 12,000 kilometers (furthest away). The spacecraft will take information from the rover and collect its own scientific data using seven scientific instruments: two cameras, the Mars-Orbiting Subsurface Exploration Radar, the Mars mineralogy spectrometer, a magnetometer, the ion analyzer and neutral particles of Mars and the energetic particle analyzer of Mars.
Apparently the lander will not do any substantive scientific work, serving as a delivery system to the rover. Besides, this explorer weighs around 240 kilograms, which makes it twice as heavy as the Chinese range of Yutu rovers, exploring the moon.
Overall, Tianwen-1 aims to take Martian action in different ways. ” Specifically, the scientific objectives of Tianwen-1 include: mapping the morphology and geological structure, studying the characteristics of the surface soil and the distribution of water ice, analyzing the composition of the surface material, measuring the ionosphere and the characteristics of the Martian climate and environment on the surface, and perceive the physical fields (electromagnetic, gravitational) as well as the internal structure of Mars Explained the members of the mission team.
The researchers also explained the name of the mission: Tianwen means “questions to heaven,” and this name was taken from the title of a poem by Qu Yuan, who lived from around 340 to 278 BCE.
Summer 2020: March in the spotlight
It should be noted that Tianwen-1 was the second Martian mission to take off in the last four days. Indeed, the United Arab Emirates’ Orbiter Hope was launched on Sunday, July 19 to study the Martian atmosphere and climate, spinning into space from Japan on top of an H-2A rocket. And like Tianwen-1, Hope (also known as the Emirates Mars Mission) is a historic mission: it is the first interplanetary mission ever developed by an Arab state. As a result, the scientific objectives of the Hope mission also focus on a wide thematic variety (morphologie, geology, internal structure and mineralogy, water, atmosphere, space environment).
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And the summer of Mars is not yet over: NASA’s next Martian rover, Perseverence (which weighs around 1040 kg), should take off in a few days, on July 30, 2020. This cluster of launches is dictated by the dynamics orbital: Earth and Mars align correctly for interplanetary missions for only a few weeks, once every 26 months. For example, the Euro-Russian rover ExoMars was also supposed to launch this summer, but it suffered from technical problems and must now wait until 2022.
Perseverence is the centerpiece of the March 2020 mission, costing some $ 2.7 billion. This mission aims to search for signs of ancient life inside Jezero Crater, which is 45 km wide and was home to a lake and a river delta billions of years ago. Perseverance will have many tasks to do, including collecting and storing samples for future return to Earth.
March 2020 will also demonstrate new technologies, such as the first helicopter to fly in an alien sky, as well as a device designed to generate oxygen from the Martian atmosphere (which is dominated by carbon dioxide ). These three missions are expected to reach the Red Planet in February 2021.
Source : Nature Astronomy
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