China News Service, January 4th, title: From birthday greetings to New Year greetings to reveal the "Space Selfie Secrets" of the Tianwen-1 Mars Rover
Author Zheng Yingying Ma Shuaisha
At the beginning of the new year in 2022, the Chinese on Earth received a "New Year's Blessing Photo" from Mars, which is a set of exquisite images sent back from distant Mars by China's first Mars exploration mission, the Tianwen-1 probe.
In fact, this is not the first time a "space photographer" of "Tianwen-1" has produced a film.
As early as during the National Day of China in 2020, “Tianwen No. 1” sent photos to report safety to the motherland and express birthday wishes. That was the first time the “Tianwen No. 1” probe took a deep-space self-portrait.
It’s not that simple to have a “space selfie”
At the beginning of China's first independent Mars exploration project, the development team was thinking about how to do a good job in visual monitoring of the working status of the Mars rover in orbit.
Mars, which is nearly 400 million kilometers away from the earth, has no other "tourists" who can help take pictures, and if you want to use ordinary selfies, it's not that simple.
Because the "Tianwen No. 1" surround device itself is too big, it needs a 15-meter-long selfie stick to realize its full-body selfie. This not only consumes resources, but also poses certain safety risks.
For this reason, the Mars Orbiter Engineering Measurement Sub-system Team of the Eighth Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation proposed a “separated monitoring plan” and designed a monitoring system composed of multiple separate measurement sensors. By combining these “little guys” (Separate the measurement sensor) to complete the deep-space "self-portrait" of the Tianwen-1 probe.
According to reports, this "New Year's Day Blessing" is similar to the previous "Birthday Blessing". The separation measurement sensor developed by the Eighth Institute 803 is used to perform separation monitoring tasks again under ground control. Two wide-angle lenses installed on both sides take one image per second, and send the image back to the Tianwen-1 probe via WiFi transmission, and finally take a photo of the orbiter with Mars, close-up of the orbiter, and the Martian North Pole ice cap, etc. The picture appears.
The picture shows the "Zhurong" Mars rover photographing the fire surface.
Image source: Photo by China National Space Administration
Ken Hone on the Self-cultivation of "Space Photographers"
On October 1, 2020, when China celebrates the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival, the China National Space Administration released the flight images of China’s first Mars exploration mission Tianwen-1 probe. The five-star red flag on the picture is dazzling and bright. Chinese red.
This is the first deep-space “self-portrait” of China's Tianwen-1 probe.
At that time, it was still on its way to "rush to fire".
After more than a year, the "Tianwen No. 1" orbiter has been in orbit for more than 500 days, and the photos returned are more detailed.
This set of exquisite images from the Tianwen-1 spacecraft released by China National Space Administration on January 1, 2022 from distant Mars, including a photo of the orbiter with Mars, a close-up of the orbiter, the Martian North Pole ice cap, and "Zhu Rong" The rover photographed the fire surface and other content, showing the working status of the orbiter, the "Zhu Rong" rover, and the obtained surface morphology of Mars.
According to Zheng Xunjiang, the chief product expert of the 803 Institute of the Eighth Academy of Sciences, the separation measurement sensor is a product designed according to the concept of "small satellites" of surveillance cameras. Upon request, to realize functions such as lock and unlock, self-power after release/separation, automatic photography, WiFi communication, etc., the development process has gone through many challenges.
Wu Di, the product chief designer of the 803 Institute of the Eighth Academy, said that the most important duty of a "space photographer" is of course to "make good shots." Change, we simulated the lighting conditions of Mars orbit on the ground, carried out hundreds of tests and verifications with different shooting angles, different light intensities, and different shooting positions, and finally formulated a segmented automatic exposure strategy under the background of Mars." Finish)