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Zhurong’s continuing travels on Mars

Zhurong overview map
Click for original map.

This past week the Chinese press released a new but limited update on the status of both its Mars orbiter Tianwen-1 and its Mars rover Zhurong.

The map to the right uses as its background a high resolution picture from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. I have superimposed Zhurong’s route in green. You can get an idea of how far the rover has traveled since resuming communications with Earth in late October by comparing this map with the one I posted then. After stopping at a small sand dune (the crescent-shaped white features), it curved around to head to the southeast towards a rough area and a trough that is thought to be filled with sediment.

Meanwhile, the orbiter has shifted its orbit, changing from one dedicated mainly as providing a communications relay between Zhurong and Earth to one that now allows it to begin a two-year photographic survey of Mars.

To supplement the resulting gaps in communications for Zhurong, China and the European Space Agency (ESA) have made their first test using ESA’s Mars Express satellite as a relay satellite. Both hope to know soon whether it worked.

In either case, Zhurong’s travels will likely be slowed somewhat due to the reduction in communications access.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

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