Hi there! I know that this forum is devoted to NASA rover, but I thought, what if we create a separate thread to discuss the achievements of this spacecraft? At least, China is the second nation to land a rover on Mars, so we can’t deny this success. If you don’t agree, I’ll delete this thread. I’ll also be glad to hear your opinion.
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In another thread in this forum, I have already mentioned that Tianwen missions aim to explore Mars’s internal structure, geology, and of course search for the signs of life. Zhurong rover is a part of this mission that aims to study the topology, analyze soil, atmosphere, and survey minerals, rocks, and other elements it’ll find. Zhurong has several instruments, such as a climate station, ground-penetrating radar, magnetic field detector, and several cameras.
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I am looking forward to getting to know something intersting from this chinese rover. As I have already mentioned in this thread, this is a great achievement for chinese space exploration department.
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Great! I’m glad that someone is interested in this rover. I’ll post all updates concerning this rover to keep you aware of it.
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Sorry, not impressed. No raw feed. To quote Elon, “copy cat.” Jeff who?
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CNSA
China National Space Administration (cnsa.gov.cn)
Landing report.
China National Space Administration (cnsa.gov.cn)
“Eight Mars orbiters are in active service as well as three operational rovers-the US’ Curiosity and Perseverance and China’s Zhurong.”
“Zhurong is 1.85 meters tall and weighs about 240 kilograms. It has six wheels and four solar panels, and can move at 200 meters an hour on the Martian surface. Among the six scientific instruments it carries are a multispectral camera, a meteorological sensor and ground-penetrating radar.” From the CNSA website landing report.
Can you imagine a rover traveling at 200 meters per hour? We need a few of these with the large US rovers for busy work and mapping, and this rover has a mineral/filtered camera system, but no details on the camera spectral range and filters on the initial page.
Hope they will be releasing some views of the area, and perhaps find ice.
Rover description page and referencing information.
China National Space Administration (cnsa.gov.cn)
Described as a Surface Composition Detector, one instrument sounds like the water detector as well as a mineral detector.
Hoping we find more detail and updating. Sounds like a great success thus far. Learing how to deal with -130 F at night and 0 F in sunlight has been achieved apparently.
Two images as released and two short videos of the separation process in orbit.
China National Space Administration (cnsa.gov.cn)
The retros were shown as a single item below deck. I’ll be looking for some disrupted rocks and surface materials. I imagine that speed of traverse will not be possible, but the immediate area looks clear of large objects.
It’s a good year for space exploration.
Thanks for starting this topic. I would kike to toy with the images, but the footing notes require written permissions apparently. May write a request to start a mission overview on this blog.
Still trying to do a good job with the Mars 2020 image returns.
Some tech references.
Elastic Particle Swarm Optimization for MarSCoDe Spectral Calibration on Tianwen-1 Mars Rover. - Abstract - Europe PMC
ERZIA Amplifiers Enable China’s Zhurong Rover Instruments to Analyze Martian Soil | Erzia
Tianwen-1 – China’s first rover to Mars – All instruments in 3D (Huoxing mission) | SpaceRobotics.eu
A site gallery of the initial images from CNSA, available to most all of use, but the method of presentation seemed a quality effort.
Gallery: China Gets Its First Up-Close Look at Mars - Caixin Global
This is a claim of an early sourced series of images from the Zhurong rover, but as others do not have confirming source access for these images, perhaps other readers here could give an assessment as to whether they recognize these as taken from another rover source?
This is a You Tube video, so it will continue to run after the initial video and you can use the ‘back’ button to get a rerun or a stop option. Very unusual looking rocks, some matching spheroidal items similar to the Perseverance patterned spheroid shapes and matrix internal material formation. 'Is this source correctly a true Zhurong source video?
I know nothing about this person on You Tube. They have about fifteen videos of imaging claimed to be from the Zhurong rover traverse at Utopia Planitia. The quality is very good, but are these actually up to two weeks oold as videos from that particular rover? That would place this source as accessing the rover from May 20th onward and downloading to You Tube imaging not accessible by searches on the open internet.
Please check these and let me know if this is correct referencing for Zhurong images.
Some very classic spheroids associated with some mineral crystallized specialized spheroidal shapes matching the matrix embedded mineral formations in the Perseverance rocks around the Mars 2020 landing site area.
I need to source all of this video and stills to check the sameness of the minerals in two widely separated areas of the Lowlands. In each case, if true and correct, the water or mineral flows were from the volcanic structures along the Highlands/Lowlands dichotomy, and would indicate either the minerals formed from the common Lowlands chemistry, or, from the various Volcano outflows along the Dichotomy formation process.
\It is very important information to know if thousands of miles of distance gave the same endpoint results in low elevation deposits.
The possibility also exists for a common atmospheric transport of mineral forming chemistry during the period of the Dichotomy formation,
One of the technical descriptions claims a maximum laser distance of 7 meters for the spectral composition detector, including hydroxyls and hydrated minerals.
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I would like to post some closeup geological images from these sources if possible, very nice and rather important educationally.
The spheroids match MER and Perseverance both, have the qualities of both, and the rocks are as ordered and altered after the surface is eroded to it’s current exposed situation as in the other locations.
There are altered darker growths under the small rocks and spheroids as separate materials very differentiated from the overlying small rocks. The altered material is as continuous as a formation sheet as at MER in a few examples. Something has allowed for a growth around the small rocks to the outer margins of the rock sides where sunlight becomes a regular source of energy and radiative heat. The growhs appear to be the product of nearly continuous shade and lack of radiation. Color varies from surrounding material, is a sheet of differing color and tone, and is one of the most active constructed items in the scenes.
Most activity in the landing locations is erosion, breakdown, and impacting when viewed at the surface. We do not do much actual geology study on Mars, we are looking at debris from erosion or environmental weathering, or impacts.
This growth under the rocks should be displayed here.
Has anyone checked for a source for these videos as authentic and legally obtained?
Recent imaging from HiRISE around the region shows a near surface thick bright layer with
darker material below that. Is the bright material the same or similar at the various rover locations? The transition into the Northern Lowlands from the transport lanes originating at the equitorial Highlands and heading towards the north would be one common source.
https://www.uahirise.org/ESP_068165_1770
The altered and sheetlike darker material, and the sections of lighly joined geometric sections of surface tiny particulates which are recent formations seem to be the most recent geologic activity in the images. They are apparently the product of atmospheric gases or condensation of liquids, and the surface loose material at small items such as rocks. Is there any other source for the formations under the rocks? After the formation of the particulate loose surface debris, a thin sheet of loose material has assembled in geometric outer domain boundaries, and in one or more cases the thin flat sheet formed has a varied tone and color from the loose particulates…
This information was obtained from the CNSA Zhurong videos claimed by the linked You Tube source, AREM BANGLA. Further confirmation is neccessary for each source.
Original image credits : CNSA
Video credits: AREM BANGLA
I’ll work on a landing location view where the Zhurong rover is traversing. The size will make it a true challenge to visualize. It is about same dimensions as the MER rovers or smaller.
Can this Zhurong rover be visualized from orbit?
A late addition, for those who sense the humor, is a quote from the WSJ publication, claimed from the CNSA, but obviously an uncorrected figure over a couple weeks time, the speed of the rover is
" —the speed of which could reach nearly 600 feet per second—on the planet. "
Sounds like one of those space rocks coming down, maybe even as fast as the helicopter on Mars, Ingenuity, which is seen in a NASA video landing at 30 feet in less than a second.
It’s all just good humor, as the storms wash the waves onto the landscape.
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I have made initial complaints against AREM BANGLA on You Tube for spreading false elaborately constructed videos with false descriptions and images taken from Curisity and other rovers. One particular video has very interesting Eathlike imaging in it. Can someone check this video and confirm to me that it is not a Zhurong video, and that it may be from an Earth source?
Did this somehow appear related to any rovers on Mars?
This is a great time to watch for actual new images from the rover.
Wow, comprehensive post Dana. He was looking good on YouTube till this video.
Haven’t checked to see if he is still running scam videos today, made several complaints on You Tube. Didn’t even look at that one you referenced. He did make an effort, even if it was wild imagination and dirty fingernails. Lot of effort. What ticks me off is the easy success stories we have to apologize about. I make numerous mistakes in my work, and it never ends. Most items are failure in progress. Reminds me of the first fools gold I had to look at as a child.
I did this alteration of some enlarged sections of a view claimed as from Mars and Zhurong. Looked like beach or fishbowl view, then the center had a dark area near the middle with a smooth altered section under the rocks. Looked like MER. Viewing the obvious inclusions, seeing the patterns, then studying the obvious front center light flash or LED added lighting was irritating. The overall diffused area lighting was very soothing to the eyes, and I knew I was smelling smoke. Did an auto adjustment and the bright areas became translucent. The sand became green in areas but not overall.
Much of the view does resemble Mars details.
I enlarged the view 2X and took a small section, altered each, and pulled as many obvious patterned items as I could. Now I like it, but can you imagine all the poeple around the world who want the truth, have no time for what I was doing, and who can only bother to spend a few minutes seeking reality and true images from this fine new Chinese rover.
A small section rotated and altered. Hope all can see the obvious.
Taken from one of the videos released on You Tube.
If China can do this in reality we will have changed history.
Good speed to the Zhurong rover in it’s work this year. Maybe they will find frost or fascinating rocks or some of the very similar filliform or rod-like fibers in the particulates as the other rovers have found.
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Go mam love to see confluence.
Thanks for this information, Dana
I always presume the details seen in a photo editor can be seen as well by persons accessing the later saved and moved cropped closeups on these blogs and online image hosts. Looking at this problem today again, it is clear I cannot see what I was referenceing here in these images, yet the information was clearly visible to me in the image editor open views.
Loss of information is automatic and invariably going to happen especially in smaller details. I have enlarged the quick alteration of the ‘beach scene’ claimed by the You Tuber as a new photograph from Mars at the Zhurong landing area.
To see the details I was familiar with in my own working I had to enlarge the actual saved image section to 2X and mark the areas which were obvious to me the day previous.
This is bad color, and it was necessary to use altered color to cause contrast to the shapes in the tinted and low contrast original.
I studied the rocks closely as I have seen examples of this type of rock in the desert in broken remnants in the US southwest. The rock is always very suggestive and in the current video the scene has ‘wet’ looking classic beach sand on the ground, the material of the rock inclusions looks much like the rod-like or filliform rock interiors of Perseverance, MER, and possibly even the new hurong rover location.
It is necessary to be fair to the You Tube source and the possibility I may be wrong about the source of the videos uploaded to the US video sources.
I do not know the real name of the source.
The rock in this enlarged altered 2X view shows clearly remnants of either living, fossilized, or built-up formations of ordered clustered flower patterned repeat shaping.
In the original this is a tan fairly flat appearing dual section of a large rock.
I’ll rework the view for a better visibility.
The various items in the scene are repeats of the linear structures which look like living objects or remnants of living objects.
The content is the reason it is necessary to be careful about source of images and videos.
The pattern has several repeats in different areas of exposure on these rocks.
Perhaps a little easier to see and understand, two sections in black borders are more contrasty. This is altered in the original video color balance, left side image unaltered.
This section is taken from the upper right corner of the entry image at #10.
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Links travelling back in time, from June 7, 2021 for link one showing the landing site from the Tianwen-1 orbiter, to Feb., 2021 for the third link, describing the process of entering orbit through the landing and launch of the rover Zhurong.
A link for the initial transimission of information from the rover on the surface of Mars to the orbiter for transmission to Earth, in May, 2021.
http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/english/n6465652/n6465653/c6812112/content.html
The landing site image has been released by CNSA at this link. The link does not work for me, does it work for others?
https://images.app.goo.gl/hUYaqGSXQUezttEw9
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Sorry Dana. These are communist. In America we call them democrats.
Currently I have been cut off downloading raw images yet again from NASA Perseverance data.
The information cannot be political. It is universal.
We call it science, yet someone is stalking me with damage intended.
I never concern myself with denying myself the science available.
I stay with the science and truth.
The same process is being conducted against me at other internet contacts.
Should I be denying science to myself and us?
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Science should be somewhere separate from politics, and denying science isn’t an option, Dana. Continue doing what you do. We appreciate it.
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Until I can identify which group is responsible for holding me hostage I will download raw images and processed images from the “related” lists provided. In past years when this was conducted on the previous rover missions I was given a strick denial by contact with NASA, and I was never given an explaination beyond that. Each laptop lasted a couple to three weeks, then the blocking occurred.
I’ll be doing what I can despite the operation being waged.
I agree we should never allow any interference in science in our daily work.
Yeah until they block you. !!
