After months of silence, China has finally broken its silence about the status of its stationary Mars rover, Zhurong. The rover was expected to wake up from hibernation in December 2022 after entering a planned sleep mode in May 2022. However, the vehicle has remained dormant, and the reason behind it has now been revealed. According to Zhang Rongqiao, chief designer of China’s Mars exploration programme, the rover likely met with excessive accumulation of sand and dust, which affected its power generation and ability to wake up. Zhang said, ‘We speculate that the battery couldn’t be charged due to the high sand and dust accumulation on the solar panels.’
The 240-kg Zhurong, named after a mythical Chinese god of fire, has six scientific instruments, including a high-resolution topography camera. Its mission was to study the planet’s surface soil and atmosphere, search for signs of ancient life, and look for subsurface water and ice using a ground-penetrating radar. Zhang stated that Zhurong had explored the Martian surface for 358 days and traveled for 1,921 meters, far exceeding its original mission time-span of three months.
Meanwhile, a NASA probe orbiting Mars captured images showing that the Chinese rover had not moved since at least September. In contrast, two other robotic rovers, NASA’s Perseverance and Curiosity, have been operating on Mars, with the former roaming the planet’s surface for more than two years and the latter for over a decade.
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