China’s Mars rover, Zhurong, has likely accumulated excessive sand and dust causing it to remain in hibernation on the red planet since May 2022, according to its mission designer. This breaks months of silence about the status of the space vehicle. Named after a mythical Chinese god of fire, Zhurong was expected to have woken up in December after entering a planned sleep mode in May 2022 as falling solar radiation due to the advent of winter on Mars cut its power generation.
Zhang Rongqiao, chief designer of China’s Mars exploration programme, said a pile-up of dust most likely affected power generation and the rover’s ability to wake up. China’s state television CCTV reported the same on Tuesday. Zhurong had explored the Martian surface for 358 days and traveled for 1,921 metres, far exceeding its original mission time span of three months.
The University of Arizona, which manages a high-resolution camera on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, reported that images beamed back from Mars showed the Chinese rover had not changed its position since at least between September 8, 2022, and February 7, 2023. Andrew Jones, a reporter focused on China’s space programme, tweeted that an official update on the rover’s status was welcome, though it was not conclusive that the Zhurong might never reawaken.
“So, this is not conclusive. Hard to gauge dust coverage on Zhurong’s solar panels from orbit,” Jones said in a tweet, noting that it could still wake up with the summer solstice on Mars in July. “If it can wake up, it can use active dust cleaning measures. It could already be doomed though,” he added.
The 530-pound Zhurong was tasked with studying the planet’s surface soil and atmosphere after landing with no mishap in May 2021. Powered by solar energy, it also looked for signs of ancient life, including any subsurface water and ice, using a ground-penetrating radar. It has six scientific instruments, including a high-resolution topography camera.
Apart from Zhurong, two other robotic rovers have been operating on Mars – NASA’s Perseverance and Curiosity, with the former roaming the planet’s surface for more than two years and the latter for about a decade.
