Zhurong’s travels during first three weeks on Mars
The science team for the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) today released a new image showing the path that China’s rover , Zhurong, has taken from its landing on May 14th through June 11th.
The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, is that photo. If you look close you can see the rover’s track skirting the edge of the bright blast mark put on the surface by the lander’s engines during touchdown. Though my scale bar is approximate, it does show that in those four weeks the rover traveled about 150 to 200 feet. However, half of that distance was crossed in the five days from June 6th to June 11th (as shown by the two different MRO images at these links), which means the pace is picking up.
The rover’s nominal three-month mission ends in mid-August, only two months from now. However, none of us should be surprised if the mission gets extended for as long as the rover continues to function.
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
The science team for the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) today released a new image showing the path that China’s rover , Zhurong, has taken from its landing on May 14th through June 11th.
The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, is that photo. If you look close you can see the rover’s track skirting the edge of the bright blast mark put on the surface by the lander’s engines during touchdown. Though my scale bar is approximate, it does show that in those four weeks the rover traveled about 150 to 200 feet. However, half of that distance was crossed in the five days from June 6th to June 11th (as shown by the two different MRO images at these links), which means the pace is picking up.
The rover’s nominal three-month mission ends in mid-August, only two months from now. However, none of us should be surprised if the mission gets extended for as long as the rover continues to function.
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
I do hope that Zhurong finds something scientifically interesting and shares it with the world.
Well there goes the theory that they never really made it there…