Curiosity sends a panoramic picture and the Chinese Zhurong continues

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NASA’s Curiosity rover gives us a stunning panoramic view of Mars. Meanwhile, the Chinese spacecraft’s mission to Mars Zhurong continues.

Its persistent successor, which landed on Mars in early 2021, may be more recent, but the Curiosity rover is still doing its job there nine years later. What car cameras can see, NASA recently published a great one PanoramaOvnahmy shown. Since it is winter at the Curiosity rover’s location, there is currently very little dust in the atmosphere. Therefore, the camera can take particularly clear pictures.

In addition to Curiosity and Perseverance, there is a third rover on Mars: the Chinese rover Zhurong landed on the red planet in May 2021. Since then, the rover has moved 900 meters above the surface of Mars and has collected ten gigabytes of data. The 1.85-meter rover will continue to explore Mars. The Chinese Space Agency announced the extension of the probe’s mission. Zhurong is still in good shape and has enough energy to move to the Mars region Utopia Planetia to go forward.

As early as 1971, Soviet researchers wanted to bring a rover to Mars for the first time. However, the landing failed and the rover crashed. The landing of the second Soviet rover succeeded in the same year, but the radio link was broken shortly thereafter. It wasn’t until 1997 that NASA was able to successfully place a rover on Mars for the first time with Sojourner. In 2004, NASA brought two rovers to Mars at the same time. One was active for six years, the other up to 14 years. Curiosity followed in 2012 and is still doing its periods on Mars today.

Thereafter, it was quiet for a while around the new Mars vehicles, until the two companions, Perseverance and Jurong, were lowered on Mars this year. But they shouldn’t be left alone: ​​With the Exomars rover, the European Space Agency (ESA), along with Russia’s Roskosmos space agency, want to bring another rover to Mars in 2022.

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