Zhurong traverse in Utopia Planitia
Zhurong · 2021 CE – 2022 CE · Mars
Drive south across a northern plain and sound what lies beneath it.
Historical context
China’s first Mars mission, Tianwen-1, sent an orbiter, a lander and a rover on a single launch: the orbiter went into orbit in February 2021, and in May the lander set the rover Zhurong down in southern Utopia Planitia. China Daily called it the first Mars expedition to accomplish orbiting, landing and roving with one probe; the Soviet Mars 2 and Mars 3 had carried orbiters, landers and small tethered robots in 1971, but the robots were never deployed. Zhurong drove 1,921 metres across the plain in a year, sounding the ground beneath it with radar, before dust and winter silenced it. Its findings revived an old argument about whether an ocean once reached this far.
The voyage, step by step
Landing in Utopia
14 May 2021
At 23:18 Universal Time on 14 May 2021, as it happened on Mars. That was 7:18 on the morning of 15 May in Beijing, the Tianwen-1 lander touched down in southern Utopia Planitia carrying the rover Zhurong. Xinhua called it the first time China had landed a probe on a planet other than Earth.
A portrait on the sand
2021 CE
A week after landing, Zhurong rolled down onto the plain. It released a small wireless camera from its underside about ten metres south of the platform, drove back beside the lander and was photographed with it.
Crusted dunes
2021 CE
Driving south, the rover studied bright barchan dunes whose surfaces were crusted and cracked, partly worn away and overlain by smaller dunes of darker sand.
Radar into the plain
2021 CE
Between 25 May and 6 September 2021, over some 1,171 metres of driving, the rover’s radar built a profile of the ground beneath its track to a depth of about eighty metres.
An ancient shoreline
2022 CE
After the conjunction the rover drove east, then south again. To a team led by Wu Bo of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the pattern of pitted cones, troughs and craters around the landing site fitted a shoreline where a northern ocean once ended.
Hibernation
18 May 2022
On 18 May 2022, with winter coming and a dust storm passing over, the rover went into dormancy after 1,921 m. It was expected to wake in December. It did not.
Outcome
1,921 m driven in 347 sols, against a planned 90, and radar layering found down to about eighty metres; the rover went dormant on 18 May 2022 and did not wake.
Zhurong
China’s first Mars rover, which drove 1,921 m across southern Utopia Planitia in 2021 and 2022.
Sources
- China succeeds in first Mars landing (Xinhua, Chinese state media; read in the Wayback Machine copy)Xinhua · Xinhua News Agency · 2021
- Geomorphic contexts and science focus of the Zhurong landing site on MarsJianjun Liu, Chunlai Li, Rongqiao Zhang and others · Nature Astronomy 6, 65–71 (published online 6 December 2021) · 2022
- Layered subsurface in Utopia Basin of Mars revealed by Zhurong rover radarChao Li, Yikang Zheng, Xin Wang, Jinhai Zhang, Ling Chen and others · Nature 610, 308–312 · 2022
- Tianwen-1 mission marks 1st year on MarsChina National Space Administration · 2022
- RoPeR_CH1 Codes: Zhurong rover penetrating radar low-frequency data with the NaTeCam position labels (dataset)Jianhui Li and Meng Xu · figshare, doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.29946872 · 2026
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