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Mars China

China Unveils First Mars Photos From Zhurong Rover (space.com) 87

Posted by BeauHD from the out-of-this-world-photography dept.
China has released the first photographs taken by its Zhurong rover, which touched down on Mars late on May 14 as part of the country's Tianwen-1 mission. Space.com reports: The China National Space Administration (CNSA), which runs the mission, has released two Mars photographs taken by the rover: one in color and one in black and white. Both images show parts of the rover and its lander against a backdrop of Utopia Planitia, the expansive northern plain that Zhurong will explore during its mission.

The color image shows a view looking to the rear of Zhurong from a navigation camera above the rover's main deck. Solar arrays are visible, as are some surface rocks and features. The black and white image is from an obstacle avoidance camera at the front of the rover. It was captured with a wide-angle lens that also revealed a view of the Mars horizon in the distance, as well as two subsurface radar instruments on the rover itself. In addition to the photos from the surface, CNSA also released two short videos of the orbiter and Zhurong rover's landing capsule separating during Friday's maneuver. Both videos come from cameras on the orbiter and show the capsule pulling away.
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China Unveils First Mars Photos From Zhurong Rover More

China Unveils First Mars Photos From Zhurong Rover

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  • Nice pictures (Score:5, Insightful)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Thursday May 20, 2021 @05:22AM (#61402956)
    best of luck to China hope they release a lot info public with public streams of video and things.

    But the real question is. Will commercial/civilian entities make it into space before the world's governments crack down on who can and can not go in to space and militarize everything off planet for security reasons.
    I see a time where humans have the means to travel in to space but not the governments permission.

    • Re:Nice pictures (Score:4, Funny)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Thursday May 20, 2021 @05:51AM (#61402996)

      best of luck to China hope they release a lot info public with public streams of video and things.

      * China quietly fires up drone *

      * Flies overhead and drops large glass jar *

      (America, 0400 hours) "Sir, we seem to have lost communication overnight with our rover. The signal, appears to be...jammed."

      (America) "Hey China. Did you happen to see anything?"

      (China) "Nope. Nothing at all to report here.."

    • Other than your dystopian Gundam fantasies, what makes you think "world's governments" would crack down on commercial/civilian missions? The US and the EU are for sure not going to outlaw it because it will give their economies a competitive advantage. India also is coming along in space launch capability and will eagerly get a slice of that action. Other governments can do what they want, but they can in no way stop the US, EU and India from allowing what they like in their own airspace - and that's the le

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

        they can in no way stop the US, EU and India from allowing what they like in their own airspace

        Technically not airspace, since there's no air. Maybe it should be called "spacespace"?

    • best of luck to China hope they release a lot info public with public streams of video and things. But the real question is. Will commercial/civilian entities make it into space before the world's governments crack down on who can and can not go in to space and militarize everything off planet for security reasons. I see a time where humans have the means to travel in to space but not the governments permission.

      Who else is going to fund a spaceway, develop the technology, further develop the technology with research projects,.... Can you trust a single corporation of even a single government to do so for the good of mankind? It has never happened before. We can't even go to the bathroom in a public place just on the assumption that the slob who just came out had the "good of all mankind" on their mind. It's retribution and government funding that keeps public spaces usable, clean, progressive. It's just the way th

    • best of luck to China

      Yeah but what will become of K'Breel now?

    • China and the USA are both very actively promoting and helping commercial space companies, not denying them permission.

      Of course there will never come a day when an unknown individual or company is allowed to launch an orbital rocket without notifying the government and being regulated, because rockets are dangerous. And even airplanes have to file flight plans.

    • But the real question is. Will commercial/civilian entities make it into space before the world's governments crack down on who can and can not go in to space and militarize everything off planet for security reasons.

      Like a significant number of well meaning people, your understanding of the realities of space travel is poor. I will explain.

      Last time humans were on the Moon. - 1972. That was over 49 years ago. We've never even come close to getting back.

      I worked with a guy (I'm an IT worker by the way) who was a big sci fi nerd and he used to say he didn't want us to go back to the Moon or Mars until we fixed problems on earth first. Lots of people agree with him. I mean if a sci fi nerd doesn't want

  • Impressive display of Chinese space exploration know how. However, considering the great complexities and costs of these interplanetary missions, would it not be better for the nations to cooperate?

    • Impressive display of Chinese space exploration know how. However, considering the great complexities and costs of these interplanetary missions, would it not be better for the nations to cooperate?

      What, you mean not taking a planet and carving it up into mortal enemi, er I mean countries?

      Yeah. We humans would have been better off.

    • Re:Brilliant but⦠(Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 20, 2021 @07:08AM (#61403106)

      The EU is already starting to cooperate with China space program. It's the US who doesn't want to. The EU is already sending astronauts to China to train and do exchanges with them! http://www.esa.int/Science_Exp... [esa.int]

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by dowhileor ( 7796472 )
      Now if we only convince them to stop trying to break in to other's secure places and trying to steal things....

      • Wouldn't it be better to stop people from *successfully* breaking into such things /places, irrespective of who they are... like not being incompetent at security?

        • That's the first step. But honestly, do you mean to excuse state actors of ANY origin from conducting covert theft?

          • Assuming all things equal...Who's model for securing "state's secrets" would someone rather adopt? All things being equal mind you...?

            • Well

              For the United States, the original model for dealing with asynchronous threats was gunboat diplomacy. Host threat actors? We'll beat you up militarily or economically. Sadly that requires capable and courageous leadership, as well as a firm grasp of timing. Dunno that anyone since Reagan has really had the right combination of balls and competence to pull that off.

              You can go on and on all day about how the only response is to just shore up your defenses, but if "cyber" attackers who are protected (o

              • Well

                For the United States, the original model for dealing with asynchronous threats was gunboat diplomacy. Host threat actors? We'll beat you up militarily or economically. Sadly that requires capable and courageous leadership, as well as a firm grasp of timing. Dunno that anyone since Reagan has really had the right combination of balls and competence to pull that off.

                You can go on and on all day about how the only response is to just shore up your defenses, but if "cyber" attackers who are protected (or funded) by foreign state actors get wind that the United States will do nothing to protect its own citizens and/or domestic business interests, they'll just keep poking and prodding until they find another way.

                As opposed to the policy of attacking any neighbor weaker than them and erasing their culture? And the US has never been anywhere but first on the list as far as protecting itself and its citizen and it's allies. Specifically allies that do not want to be invaded and taken over by their neighbors just because their neighbor's military is the stronger. And the first response is always shoring up defenses once attacked. And further, once you are the one setting the standards for everyone else, on defense and

                • Yes, as opposed to attacking any neighbor weak enough and erasing their culture.

                  Honestly though, when was the last time you heard about the US bombing state actors who sponsor cyber attacks against the US? I don't think that's happened yet. Hell we barely sanction anyone except Russia over hacks.

        • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

          by dowhileor ( 7796472 )
          Or....They could stop crying to the UN about their demands to be allowed to codevelop a project, just to use it as a vector 20 years later. I repeat, a fringe vector in a fringe product? So success is relative. Mind you that their previous missions to mars were made up infrastructure based on that same product. the exact same product mostly developed elsewhere so be careful how you define "success" as it may become a expensive trend.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          Yeah, not likely to happen in the US, the guys who are competent to protect something like the Pentagon's networks are expensive, and no one in the military is going to approve hiring a guy who they have to pay more than a 4-star general.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by v1 ( 525388 )

      It's going to be quite awhile before we see anything approaching "cooperation" from China on any highly visible project like space exploration.

      While we've got cameras live-streaming spectacular explosions on the ground and rockets as they leave the atmosphere, they didn't even publicly announce the MISSION until their rover had landed and was verified as functioning.

      They are absolutely terrified of their public hearing anything about failure. They'll never agree to anything big and pioneering where there's

    • Impressive display of Chinese space exploration know how. However, considering the great complexities and costs of these interplanetary missions, would it not be better for the nations to cooperate?

      For the moon missions, science was secondary. Which one of the competing governments is still around?

    • No, it wouldn't be better to cooperate. Cooperation gives you ULA, or the HLS National Team, or the ISS: a tremendously expensive political project that has no external motivation and prevents fresh ideas from sprouting. Having a variety of different entities competing spurs innovation and progress.

      We do cooperate on sharing data, of course, so everyone benefits.

    • No, it would not be better for nations to cooperate. So much time and effort is wasted trying to keep all involved happy. Every nation wants to look like an equal partner and so will do what they can to "contribute" even when the contribution only slows things down.

      Look at ITER for what we get from international projects. People trying to do fusion research in the USA are finding it difficult to get funding and permits because the DOE doesn't want any fusion project, public or private, to overshadow ITER

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

        There's at least two Google Talk videos out there about fusion power where people were presenting their research and theories. I recall Dr. Robert Busard taking about how he was able to get funding under a US Navy nuclear propulsion grant. He requested more money but was told that the Navy could only fund programs under limited conditions. If something got too big then it fell outside the Department of Defense and would have to go to the Department of Energy. DoE was not interested in funding anything fusion outside of ITER no matter how promising.

        How do you know his research is more promising than ITER? Besides stars and nuclear bombs, I have not heard of other fusion methods get anywhere as close to break even as magnetic confinement. Also, you can't say the DoE isn't interested in other methods, since they are funding the National Ignition Facility to research inertial confinement fusion.

        • How do you know his research is more promising than ITER?

          I don't. I pointed out that regardless of how the Polywell Fusor project went in achieving net positive energy output the DoE was not interested.

          Besides stars and nuclear bombs, I have not heard of other fusion methods get anywhere as close to break even as magnetic confinement.

          Could that be because any electrostatic confinement research is either lacking in funds or kept as a military secret? The DoD isn't going to mention how their fusion research is going. If there is similar research in Russia, China, or some other nation then they are likely to keep quiet for the same reasons as the people behind the Polywell Fusor.

          Also, you can't say the DoE isn't interested in other methods, since they are funding the National Ignition Facility to research inertial confinement fusion.

          The NIF was bui

  • What a fantastic achievement, well done to everyone involved.

  • Any way of authenticating? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fygment ( 444210 ) on Thursday May 20, 2021 @07:08AM (#61403104)

    The difference between the US efforts in this field and pretty much anyone else is the near instant availability of information and sometimes the raw pre-processed info is also put public eg. Cassini's imagery.

    So if an agency is so miserly (secretive?) with its information both before and during a mission what does that say?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Let's just get this out of the way: "This looks shopped. I can tell from some of the pixels and from seeing quite a few shops in my time."

      If they provide more images, I will probably believe they are legitimate. I think releasing a trickle of information just means they're China; acting transparent would set a bad precedent for their government and possibly be even more suspicious.

      • Let's just get this out of the way: "This looks shopped. I can tell from some of the pixels and from seeing quite a few shops in my time."

        The problem was that by chance there happened to be an old discarded Winnie-the-Pooh VHS tape sitting on the Martian ground within the field of view. It took a while for the censors to edit it out convincingly.

    • How "instant" were the data from America's first Mars rovers published?

      • Re:Any way of authenticating? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Entrope ( 68843 ) on Thursday May 20, 2021 @07:41AM (#61403176) Homepage

        The answer seems to be [vimeo.com] within minutes of the signals arriving on Earth.

        Why? Do you think that China is using 45-year-old technology on their Mars mission, and that doing so would give them an excuse for the delay?

        • And when did Zhurong's image signal arrived on Earth?

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Entrope ( 68843 )

            That 1976 TV broadcast was the very same day that Viking 1 landed on Mars. China's rover landed six days ago. One of the first things you want to do with a lander is to see what is around it, so you can start planning the next actions. If taking pictures took any longer than six hours, that was absolutely pokey compared to 45-year-old US technology. If delivering the pictures took any longer than a day, that was also absolutely pokey.

            Stop JAQing off and start making an actual argument based on actual fa

            • China's rover landed six days ago. One of the first things you want to do with a lander is to see what is around it, so you can start planning the next actions.

              One of the first things you want to do with this ROVER is to wait for its automated solar panels and antenna to unfold and charge, and then check everything is okay, before spending more energy to take a photo and then transmit it across the solar system.

              The ROVER is designed for a much more complicated mission than just landing on Mars. There's no "planning for next action" if its other non-picture-taking systems don't work. You either take pictures (after waiting for the solar panels to unfold and prov

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Entrope ( 68843 )

                Yes, sorry, the Viking 1 orbiter had the solar cells, not the lander.

                You failed to do any research before you started JAQing off to make excuses for the Chinese Communists regime. Color me unimpressed by your belated efforts.

                If a rover is so important to you, let's look at [cmu.edu] the very first river to land on Mars. That mission sent back pictures the first day it landed. By this many days after landing, Sojourner was running around doing science.

                And to borrow a trope from xkcd: Sojourner was closer in time to

            • They want immediate pictures, sent immediately, in case there's something funny about the landing zone leading to loss of comm or the lander. They want to know about it.

        • Re:Any way of authenticating? (Score:5, Informative)

          by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 ) on Thursday May 20, 2021 @08:24AM (#61403254)
          More info, at least if you believe an official source: http://www.xinhuanet.com/engli... [xinhuanet.com]

          It took ground controllers more than an hour to establish the success of the pre-programmed landing. They had to wait for the rover to autonomously unfold its solar panels and antenna to send the signals after landing, and there was a time delay of more than 17 minutes due to the 320-million-km distance between Earth and Mars.

          Sounds to me that taking pictures to please American conspiracy nuts was low on the agenda, and the design of the rover itself meant it was seemingly unable to transmit anything for over an hour, since confirming the landing was successful itself took over an hour. Basically, they sent a rover that is much more complicated in design than the Viking 1 lander, and so immediate taking of photos from the surface and transmitting them and publishing was lower priority than actually checking that everything worked.

          • Re:Any way of authenticating? (Score:4)

            by Entrope ( 68843 ) on Thursday May 20, 2021 @08:31AM (#61403270) Homepage

            Do you think the US lander didn't need to deploy an antenna to transmit pictures? Watch at least a few minutes of the video I linked -- Viking 1 had to discard a protective shell and deploy its antenna before transmitting anything back to earth. It had solar panels, too. You haven't yet described anything that was more complicated than what Viking 1 did 45 years ago.

            • The Viking 1 LANDER used RTGs. It didn't need to wait for its solar panels to UNFOLD it to CHARGE before taking and sending pictures.

              Why did you deliberately omit the fact that Zhurong's solar panels needed to an hour to unfold first?

              You haven't yet described anything that was more complicated than what Viking 1 did 45 years ago.

              The Viking 1 is a LANDER. Zhurong is ROVER. If you have a very limited energy budget, and you have a bunch of complicated systems (such as for mobility) to check and test, why would you waste time taking pictures and transmitting them BEFORE checking everything was in workin

            • Hell, the bit I quoted SPECIFICALLY mentions waiting for the solar panels to unfold. So your omission of that was deliberate because you knew your argument was bullshit if you took that into account

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Entrope ( 68843 )

                Slashdot puts a time stamp just after the name of the person who made the comment. You posted your comment about the RTGs 14 minutes after I posted the one you just responded to.

                One might draw conclusions about you from your behavior given that information, which was literally right in front of you when you wrote this comment.

          • More info, at least if you believe an official source: http://www.xinhuanet.com/engli... [xinhuanet.com]

            It took ground controllers more than an hour to establish the success of the pre-programmed landing. They had to wait for the rover to autonomously unfold its solar panels and antenna to send the signals after landing, and there was a time delay of more than 17 minutes due to the 320-million-km distance between Earth and Mars.

            Sounds to me that taking pictures to please American conspiracy nuts was low on the agenda, and the design of the rover itself meant it was seemingly unable to transmit anything for over an hour, since confirming the landing was successful itself took over an hour. Basically, they sent a rover that is much more complicated in design than the Viking 1 lander, and so immediate taking of photos from the surface and transmitting them and publishing was lower priority than actually checking that everything worked.

            That sounds like it would be high on the agenda, as looking good on the international stage is a high priority.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by cusco ( 717999 )

              They successfully landed a rover on Mars, if that's not "looking good on the international stage" then I don't know what the frack would be.

              China doesn't have the CNN/FOX/etc. competitive 24x7 news cycle, instant gratification isn't high on their list of priorities.

      • Well it took like 7 minutes for the transmission to get here.. so about 8 minutes after the landing.

    • Re:Any way of authenticating? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Thursday May 20, 2021 @09:04AM (#61403368)

      The difference between the US efforts in this field and pretty much anyone else is the near instant availability of information and sometimes the raw pre-processed info is also put public eg. Cassini's imagery.

      So if an agency is so miserly (secretive?) with its information both before and during a mission what does that say?

      Institutional paranoia and insecurity. Here in the USA we are okay with airing our mistakes. NASA is pretty open until there is an obvious need for secrecy. And Spacex is remarkably failure tolerant, to the point of calling failures exciting on occasion.

      We did just come off a short foray into that weird world of faux perfection masking insecurity. Seems we ended up not liking it very much.

      It is a real pity though, that we don't hear much until apres landing of these things. The excitement, and the tension is all part of the fun.

      • Re:Any way of authenticating? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Thursday May 20, 2021 @09:46AM (#61403578) Homepage Journal

        It's not paranoia or insecurity, and in fact they broadcast some stuff live in China. If it failed there wouldn't be any point covering it up, all that would do is delay the announcement by a few days and other countries would start to speculate if they noticed that there was no telemetry coming back. A lot like the moon landings, they couldn't be faked because it would require so many other countries, many of them rivals, to cooperate in the cover-up.

        It's just a different culture, they do it via press release in an orderly manner.

        And by the way, Space X recently started encrypting their telemetry.

        https://www.extremetech.com/ex... [extremetech.com]

        You could argue that is paranoia and fear, but it's actually just normal commercial considerations, not wanting useful info to go to competitors. Don't read too much into it, Occam's razor and all that.

    • Re:Any way of authenticating? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SirSlud ( 67381 ) on Thursday May 20, 2021 @09:04AM (#61403370) Homepage

      So if an agency is so miserly (secretive?) with its information both before and during a mission what does that say?

      Not much? Come right out and say it - you think China's making shit up, or could it be that an authoritative government who is a lot newer to the space faring game is simply a lot more tentative and/or has other priorities to releasing photos?

      I think a lot of Americans are stuck in the past by dint of stubborn national id programming. The days of China fabricating preposterous claims that wouldn't pass the muster of international observation are long gone. They're a first world technology nation that is advanced enough to know it'd be a waste of their time and effort. And most importantly, they simply don't need to.

    • Re:Any way of authenticating? (Score:5, Informative)

      by InfiniteZero ( 587028 ) on Thursday May 20, 2021 @11:05AM (#61403832)

      Apparently the main bottleneck is the orbiter, which had to be maneuvered into a shorter orbit. Bandwidth is limited between the orbiter and rover as well as Earth. This video has some good explanation:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      "Information is power." Secrecy has been a part of the standard way of operating in China for 5,000 years, don't you think it's a bit unreasonable to expect them to change that overnight?

    • What it says is that their priorities are different. The US space program goes out of their way to make sure we get "instant gratification" images because it lives or dies based on public opinion, attention and excitement. If there is an announcement from NASA that we have landed on Mars, but there's nothing pretty to show, then it won't make the news cycle. And it's become seemingly ever more important as time passes. For the latest landing they, for example, had the first ever video cameras on the lander

    • Re:Any way of authenticating? (Score:5, Informative)

      by hackertourist ( 2202674 ) on Thursday May 20, 2021 @04:30PM (#61404904)

      The difference between the US efforts in this field and the Chinese is infrastructure.
      Sending information across a distance of 50 million km is hard. Most Mars landers carry a transmitter that can communicate directly with Earth, but at a very low bitrate. You won't be sending high-res images via that link, just telemetry.
      Most communication is done via a relay satellite in Mars orbit. The US has two of those. These are in sun-synchronous (almost polar) orbits, which means they'll be in view of the rover once a day for maybe 10 minutes. The link from the lander to the satellite is much faster than the lander-Earth link, but you have to wait until the sat is overhead.

      Tianwen-1 has an orbiter, but the one time you can pretty much guarantee that an orbiter that arrives together with its lander will be out of sight of the lander is during the landing. IIRC they used an ESA orbiter for the first relay session.

      Then you have to send the data from the relay sat to a ground station, which can only be done when the ground station is in view. NASA has 3 ground stations with at least 4 large antennas each, spread around the world so at least one is in view at all times. China has one tracking station abroad (Argentina) which I suspect leaves gaps in their coverage.

      Then there's the difference in mentality. NASA sees the value of PR and will make accommodations to get good PR out of these events. The CSA is more low-key because it doesn't live and die by public opinion.

  • Disproves that round Mars conspiracy.

  • Impressive cooperation (Score:4, Funny)

    by Chelloveck ( 14643 ) on Thursday May 20, 2021 @11:23AM (#61403896)
    Wow, looks like they used the same fake set as the American "Mars" missions. Now that's some impressive international cooperation right there! I had no idea the conspiracy went this deep.

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