https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/19/22443640/china-tianwen-1-first-images-zhurong-mars-rover-landing

I also read that the orbiter has now reached it final orbit…. I never considered that perhaps it needed to be in the correct orbit to relay data after dropping the rover off…. That makes nothing but sense…

https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/china-releases-first-images-of-mars-taken-by-zhu-rong-rover/ar-BB1gUnLK

I first learned of soft errors a few years ago when a device had several memory failures. We could add more shielding and increase the price or add error correction to the firmware which is cheaper. The error correction worked just fine.

Ray Van Dune: When I was researching my Chronological Encyclopedia (presently out of print) I learned of this fact. See the text in this link from NASA.

Lee Stevenson: I just explained in a previous comment that statements like this misconstrue the reality. Almost all of the failures were by the Russians. Everyone else, especially the U.S., has a relatively good track record, succeeding almost all the time.

This is not to say this is easy. It is merely to note that the real odds are hidden because during the Soviet era the Russians lost a lot of Mars landers because of a systematic problem with the computer chips they used.

“Wu said that more than half of the over 20 Mars landing attempts made by spacefaring nations so far failed due to the exceptionally difficult nature of such maneuvers.”

Kinda says it all really…lol…

http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/english/n6465652/n6465653/c6812005/content.html

Ray Van Dune: I stand corrected. I was confusing Beagle with Schiaparelli, and combining them in my mind. Both however sadly rank in the end as failures.

Demonstrates the danger of depending on one’s memory, eh?

Au contraire, the EU attempted a Mars landing in 2016, with a lander named Schiaparelli. It splattered after apparently tumbling out of control because of software deficiencies. The rumor that the entire development staff was canned, but immediately rehired by Boeing for their exceptionally modest compensation expectations, is completely unfounded.

Admittedly it was a ride share, but not with NASA, it was with the very successful ESA “Mars Express” orbiter mission. ( Still ongoing 18 years later! ) The total cost of the actual lander was only $120 million. A pittance compared to any other Mars mission. All of which actually proves your point, landing on Mars is not as difficult as sometimes made out!

(For the Mars curious, it is well worth checking out the website http://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Mars_Express

They are a bit slow in releasing images, but the ones they do are usually stunning, including many in old fashioned red/green glasses 3D!)

Kenneth Michell: Your memory is wrong. The U.S. has only had one failed Mars lander, Mars Polar Lander. It has had no rover failures out of five attempts. Europe has as yet not tried to land anything on Mars. The UK tried to put a lander down as a ride share on a NASA mission, dubbed Beagle, but that failed.

All the other Mars lander/orbiter failures were from Russia, with most during the Soviet-era.

When any NASA or JPL spokesman tries to fear-monger how difficult it is to land on Mars, and cites the horrible statistic that says “about half of all missions failed,” they are misusing statistics to fake things. The U.S. has a stellar record. Russia does not. That is the only reason so many Mars landers have failed.

Have Energia bring borsht.

Hulk, out!