On Mars there is another citizen, it’s the chinese rover Zhurong, of the mission Tianwen-1, and it’s the first one to talk another language. Till now, infact, only the Nasa was able to do it. The China lands on Mars without damages or problems, it was a success. And now what will the rover Zhurong do?
The task to land on Mars
The China is the third nation to try the mammoth task to land on Mars. Before of it only the America and the Russia. Anyway, the russian colleagues were never able to land. Before of Zhurong the NASA was the undisputed queen of the red planet.
Mars is 320 million of kilometers away, which delays the communications. During these communicative distance the vehicles have to do the down all alone. During the ones that are called the nine minutes of terror everything can happen.
And it is right during the nine minutes of terrors that we lost most of the american and russian rovers.
But not Zhurong. The chinese rover did it. After the nine minutes of terror, which kept everyone in suspence, it communicated to the team that was waiting for its message on Earth, that it landed and that it was good.
Welcome on the red planet Zhurong.
The chinese conquer to the space
It isn’t the first time that Bejing tried to arrive on the red planet. In the 2011 it shipped a small orbiting vehicle on a russian rocket. But the vehicle ended to burn in the atmosphere.
This time the China wanted to demonstrated that it was able to do all by itself. And its growth about the aerospace competences is incredible. In few years it obtained the knowledges that the american had during decades of experience.
What does Zhurong mean? And Tianwen?
If we know the eastern culture we know that nothing is left to chance. Not even the names of the things.
Tianwen – 1 is the name of the mission and of the vehicle that brought and released on Mars the rover. Now Tianwen orbits around the red planet, it shots images, it studies the atmosphere and it sorts out the communications between the rover and the Earth.
But what does Tianwen mean? Tianwen means “questions to the sky” and it’s a quote from an ancient chinese poetry of about 2000 years ago.
While Zhurong is the name of the ancient God of fire and it remembers even the name of the planet Mars, that in chinese is called Star of the Fire.
The mission Tianwen and the rover Zhurong
“The God of the Fire touched the surface of Mars after 295 days of travel, 3 months of orbit and 9 minutes of terror”. That’s how the Technicals of the Chinese National Administration of the Space announced the landing of Tianwen.
The rover Zhurong took off, together with the space vehicle Tianwen – 1, the 23rd of july 2020. The last 10th of february it entered in the orbit of Mars and it remained there until the 15th of may, when the probe released the rover, that landed without damages after nine minutes of terror.
The lander was protected, inside its shield, equipped with a parachute and a rocket, to slow down the landing.
Zhurong landed on the Utopia Planitia, where back in the 1976 landed even a rover of the NASA, Viking-2. They think that in this area, once, there was an ocean.
The chinese rover is a martian vehicle of 240 kilos, six wheels, supplied with solar panels, which mission is the one to collect samples of rocks from the surface.
The success of Zhurong and the thanks of the President
Maybe Zhurong isn’t the most advanced rover that walks on the red planet in this moment. But this mission decrees the entrance of the China to the Space race.
A success that deserved the thanks of the chinese President Xi Jinping: “You traced the paths of the chinese people on Mars, by putting another milestone in the development of our space research, by bringing it to drive the world in the interplanetary system.
You were brave to accept the challenge, you made the excellence of our country”.
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