As a little background, the NASA Perseverance Rover and Ingenuity helicopter launched in 2020 with intent for a follow on mission to return samples to Earth, most likely launched by the ESA in the 2028/2029 Mars launch window. That means the ESA Mars lander would arrive six to eight months later, and the rocks to arrive back on Earth by 2033.
China has been planning a Mars sample return mission called Tianwen-3 for launch before the end of this decade, probably in the same '28/'29 favorable launch window with sample return very likely to be in the same time frame as the NASA/ESA mission, although they claim return by '31. Spacenews.com reports China announced on April 22nd at the International Conference of Deep Space Sciences in Hefei, Anhui province, that they are looking to include their version of Ingenuity in this mission.
The mission will use a pair of Long March 5 rockets to send two separate spacecraft stacks towards the Red Planet around 2030 with the goal of collecting and returning 500 grams of samples.
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The two Long March 5 launches will carry a lander and ascent vehicle and an orbiter and return module respectively. Entry, descent and landing will build on technology used for the Zhurong rover landing as part of China’s Tianwen-1 Mars mission.
The news here is that the landing payload will also have limited capacity to collect samples close to the landing site, using either a six-legged crawling robot or an Ingenuity-like helicopter. The fact that they don't talk about a rover able to move on its own on Mars for as long as they want it to strikes me as a little strange. It may or may not have anything to do with problems with that Zhurong rover from Tianwen-1. The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) unveiled a prototype of their helicopter in 2021. You probably won't be surprised to learn that it looks a lot like Ingenuity. Not an exact copy, but clearly Ingenuity was an inspiration.
The source article at SpaceNews.com has some interesting highlights about the mission, but given how preliminary it all appears to be, might not be worth much time reading. One fact that stood out to me was that the Chinese mission is restricting landings on Mars to very low-lying areas.
Prospective sites required to have an elevation of at least 3,000 meters below the zero-elevation level, or the equivalent to sea level on Earth. This provides the lander with more atmosphere to move through to slow its descent onto the Martian surface.
Almost 10,000 feet below "sea level" - or the equivalent of that on Mars. I think.
Yes. And the technology they use to do this will be technology they gained from the US by hacking, espionage and intellectual property theft.
ReplyDeleteSounds like the Hellas Basin is a possible site. It has always puzzled me that the most likely site for an ocean on Mars doesn’t attact more attention.
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