Today (May 20), the Lunar Exploration and Aerospace Engineering Center of the National Space Administration stated: In order to cope with the reduction in the power generation capacity of the solar wing caused by the dusty weather and the extremely low ambient temperature in winter, according to the design plan and flight control strategy, the "Zhurong" The rover went into hibernation mode on May 18.
It is expected that around December this year, the landing area of the "Zhurong" will enter the early spring season, and it will resume normal work after the environmental conditions improve.
The "Tianwen-1" mission team found through the medium-resolution images obtained by the orbiter that the landing area of the "Zhurong" rover experienced an obvious sandstorm process.
Scientists compared the typical landforms (especially the crater edge) in the 120-meter-resolution images of the "Zhurong" landing area on March 16 and April 30, 2022, combined with the solar wing power generation reflected by the recent rover telemetry information The change in current can tell that the local area is experiencing strong sand and dust weather.
At present, the "Tianwen-1" orbiter is implementing remote sensing exploration of the global coverage of Mars, and the current imaging area is mainly concentrated in the high latitudes of the southern hemisphere of Mars.
The mission team will continue to monitor local weather conditions using the orbiter whenever possible.
(CCTV reporter Cui Xia, Xu Jing, Wu Tianbai, and Geng Yan from the Lunar Exploration and Aerospace Engineering Center of the National Space Administration)