Posted on 05/13/2021 8:34:58 AM PDT by BenLurkin
China aims to achieve orbiting, landing, and roving on the Red Planet in a single mission. The country has already successfully entered into the orbit of Mars when it reached the Red Planet in February.
If China successfully lands its spacecraft on the surface, it will become only the third country to land a rover on another planet after the United States and Russia.
China's Mars orbiter is carrying seven scientific payloads, while the rover is equipped with six instruments to explore the Red Planet.
CNSA, which is one of the most tight-lipped space agencies, recently released the name of the rover to be Zhurong. "Zhurong is the god of fire in ancient Chinese mythology, which echoes with the Chinese name of the red planet, Huoxing (meaning the planet of fire). Fire brought warmth and brightness to the ancestors of humankind, and fire lit up human civilization," it said in a statement.
"The name is another example of Chinese aerospace workers' scientific romance as they have named spacecraft, including Tianwen, Chang'e, and Beidou, after Chinese traditional culture, which also shows the Chinese people's spirit of exploration and cultural confidence,"
(Excerpt) Read more at indiatoday.in ...
If the China Mars mission is a failure the people in China will hear reports about how awesomely successful it was and how it proved Sino supremacy over evil capitalist Americans.
Commies on the RED planet. What took them so long? Maybe... Communism ?
I don't think this is correct. The Russians attempted twice to land a rover on Mars back in the 1970's, but both missions crashed. They've landed on Venus, but those weren't rovers. They have a Mars mission in the works with the Europeans, but it won't launch until 2022.
(I'm not counting moon rovers; both the Chinese and Russians have landed unmanned moon rovers.)
This is backwards. It's technically much harder to land on Mars without going into Martian orbit first, the way the US has been doing. The tradeoff is that you also save a lot on spacecraft weight by not needing an orbiter stage.
They’ll be wanting to do it again an hour later...
What a beautiful culture! They name their space equipment after what...God and Godesses? *rolls eyes*
Whereas Americans and Canadians have more utilitarian names, like Challenger, The Canadian Arm (not sure what it’s called in English but it helped the space shuttle get repaired, I think), Rover, etc.
Even the Soviets had Sputnik, though I have no idea what it means.
LOL! Just like McDonald’s. Tasty food but ultimately not fulfilling.
So is the rover going to take out the American rover? /s
Jokes aside, the whole reason they parked it in orbit for over a month was so that national coverage of the US rover would die down...assuming that theirs doesn’t do a ‘ Schiaparelli‘...
The Canada arm 2 is on the iss, I believe the one on the shuttle was just the Canada arm
Well the chinks are not doing a good job of that, I really hope it fails to land
‘Sputnik’ means ‘satellite’ in Russian, iirc.
I wonder what they’ll name the crater.
The name for the Canadian robot arm of the space shuttle was "Fisto Roboto"
Bam Ding Ow
If the China Mars mission is a SUCCESS, the people in China will hear reports about how awesomely successful it was and how it proved Sino supremacy over evil capitalist Americans and that will be the last they hear about it.
Our next Rover needs to be armed to deal with Red invaders.
We started off that way. Our first three programs were...
Mercury
Gemini
Apollo
Our rocket names carry on that way.
Thor
Minotaur
Titan
Atlas
etc...
Nothing wrong with the Chicoms doing that from my perspective. It’s better than the old Soviet way of Soyuz (Union), Foton (Photon), Luna (moon), etc. Pretty dry naming convention.
Thank you so much! I suppose you’re right. Every country should give names to their space equipment as it sees fit.
If those names are important to them, well, it’s “none of my beeswax.”
Thanks again for your post. Just so tired of having to face the one existential threat after another.
I think President Trump was one of the only presidents who didn’t age dramatically in office. Says a lot about his love for America and his stamina/work ethic.
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