The reporter learned from the National Space Administration on the 6th that as of May 5, the "Tianwen-1" orbiter has been in orbit for 651 days, 240 million kilometers away from the earth, and the "Zhurong" rover has worked on the surface of Mars for 347 Martian days. , the accumulative driving distance is 1921 meters, and the two devices have accumulated about 940GB of original scientific data, and the operation is normal.
During the ring fire, the seven payloads carried by the "Tianwen-1" orbiter were all powered on, and continued to carry out global remote sensing exploration of Mars.
According to reports, the "Zhurong" Mars rover will continue to carry out the expansion inspection and exploration mission after completing the 90-Mars day inspection mission on August 15, 2021.
At present, the area where the "Zhurong" rover is located has entered winter, which is similar to that of our earth. After entering winter, the altitude angle of sunlight in the northern hemisphere decreases and the duration of illumination shortens.
According to the measurements, the local maximum temperature at noon on the rover has dropped to -20°C, and the ambient temperature at night is as low as -100°C.
In addition, due to the presence of sand and dust weather, the light intensity is further weakened, which affects the power generation capacity of the solar wing battery array of the Mars rover.
Recently, the engineering team adopted the rotation of the solar wing to adjust the light angle, reduce the daily work items and time, and achieve energy balance.
The rotation period of Mars is close to that of Earth. A Martian day is only about 40 minutes longer than that of Earth. The inclination of Mars' rotation axis is 25.19°, which is also very close to Earth. Therefore, Mars also has day and night alternations and seasonal changes like Earth.
The orbital period of Mars is about 687 days, that is, 1 Martian year is equivalent to 1.9 Earth years, which means that the average duration of each season on Mars is about twice as long as on Earth.
When the "Zhurong" first landed last year, when Mars moved to the vicinity of the aphelion, the direct sunlight point was in the northern hemisphere. At that time, the northern hemisphere had just entered summer and the southern hemisphere had entered winter.
Now, nearly a year after landing on Mars, Mars is running near the perihelion, and the direct sun point is in the southern hemisphere. The northern hemisphere where "Zhurong" is located is entering winter and the southern hemisphere is entering summer.
In the next two months, the direct sun point will continue to move to the south of Mars, reaching around the Tropic of Cancer around mid-to-late July, when Mars' northern hemisphere will enter the coldest season of the year.
In order to safely survive extreme weather such as Martian winter and sandstorms, the "Zhurong" rover has designed working modes such as autonomous sleep. When the energy is reduced to a certain level, it will automatically enter the sleep mode. After the environmental conditions gradually improve, it will return to normal. Operating mode.
(Reporters: Song Chen, Hu Zhe)