APOD: Tianwen-1 Mission to Mars (2020 Jul 25)

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APOD: Tianwen-1 Mission to Mars (2020 Jul 25)

Post by APOD Robot » Sat Jul 25, 2020 4:06 am

Image Tianwen-1 Mission to Mars

Explanation: On July 23, this Long March 5 heavy-lift rocket rose into a blue morning sky from China's Hainan Island Wenchang Satellite Launch Center. The rocket carried an orbiter, lander, and rover to ask Heavenly Questions on the ambitious Tianwen-1 mission to Mars. In fact Tianwen-1 was the second of three missions scheduled for a July departure to the Red Planet. The United Arab Emirates launched its Amal (Hope) Mars probe on July 19. NASA's launch of its Mars Perseverance Rover from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, USA is scheduled for July 30. That is the last planned Mars launch for 2020 though. The minimum-energy launch window for an expedition to Mars is coming to a close in 2020 and will reopen in 2022.

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Re: APOD: Tianwen-1 Mission to Mars (2020 Jul 25)

Post by orin stepanek » Sat Jul 25, 2020 10:40 am

169A2911Dai.jpg
Here they come Mars!
Orin

Smile today; tomorrow's another day!

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Re: APOD: Tianwen-1 Mission to Mars (2020 Jul 25)

Post by Dan » Sat Jul 25, 2020 11:17 am

Could be right out of the Thunderbirds... Safe travels Tianwen-1

jGecko

Re: APOD: Tianwen-1 Mission to Mars (2020 Jul 25)

Post by jGecko » Sat Jul 25, 2020 11:37 am

What are those odd small bumps all over the upper section of the vehicle? Cameras?

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Re: APOD: Tianwen-1 Mission to Mars (2020 Jul 25)

Post by orin stepanek » Sat Jul 25, 2020 11:55 am

jGecko wrote: Sat Jul 25, 2020 11:37 am What are those odd small bumps all over the upper section of the vehicle? Cameras?
Oh Wow! I don't see any bumps. Can you point them out?
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Re: APOD: Tianwen-1 Mission to Mars (2020 Jul 25)

Post by neufer » Sat Jul 25, 2020 12:20 pm

jGecko wrote: Sat Jul 25, 2020 11:37 am
What are those odd small bumps all over the upper section of the vehicle? Cameras?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... %9C%BA.jpg

They appear to be rectangular clasps holding the third stage on.
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Re: APOD: Tianwen-1 Mission to Mars (2020 Jul 25)

Post by heehaw » Sat Jul 25, 2020 12:32 pm

I hope all goes well! (The poor old Russians tried, repeatedly, but they never succeeded in getting a successful landing on Mars.)

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Re: APOD: Tianwen-1 Mission to Mars (2020 Jul 25)

Post by neufer » Sat Jul 25, 2020 2:01 pm

heehaw wrote: Sat Jul 25, 2020 12:32 pm
I hope all goes well!

(The poor old Russians tried, repeatedly, but they never succeeded in getting a successful landing on Mars.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champ_de_Mars wrote:
<<The Champ de Mars ("Field of Mars") is a large public greenspace in Paris, France, located in the seventh arrondissement, between the Eiffel Tower to the northwest and the École Militaire to the southeast. The park is named after the Campus Martius ("Mars Field") in Rome, a tribute to the Latin name of the Roman God of war. The name alludes to the fact that the lawns here were formerly used as drilling and marching grounds by the French military. Jacques Charles and the Robert brothers launched the world's first hydrogen-filled balloon from the Champ-de-Mars on 27 August 1783. This place witnessed the spectacle and pageantry of some of the best-remembered festivals of the French Revolution. On 14 July 1790 the first "Federation Day" celebration (fête de la Fédération), now known as Bastille Day, was held on the Champ de Mars, exactly one year after the storming of the prison. The following year, on 17 July 1791, the massacre on the Champ de Mars took place. Jean Sylvain Bailly, the first mayor of Paris, became a victim of his own revolution and was guillotined there on 12 November 1793.>>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars wrote:
<<Mars carries the name of the Roman god of war and is often referred to as the "Red Planet". The latter refers to the effect of the iron oxide prevalent on Mars' surface, which gives it a reddish appearance distinctive among the astronomical bodies visible to the naked eye.>>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_(politics) wrote:
<<In politics, a red flag is predominantly a symbol of socialism, communism, Marxism, trade unions, left-wing politics, and historically of anarchism; it has been associated with left-wing politics since the French Revolution (1789–1799). Socialists adopted the symbol during the Revolutions of 1848 and it became a symbol of Communism as a result of its use by the Paris Commune of 1871. The flags of several socialist states, including China, Vietnam and the Soviet Union, are explicitly based on the original red flag. Prior to the French Revolution and even today, red flags or banners were not associated with socialism, communism, or anarchism, but were seen as a symbol of defiance and battle.

In the Middle Ages, ships in combat flew a long red streamer, called the Baucans, to signify a fight to the death. By the 17th century, the Baucans had evolved into a red flag, or "flag of defiance." It was raised in cities and castles under siege to indicate that they would not surrender. Two red flags soaked in calf's blood were flown by marchers in South Wales during the Merthyr Rising of 1831. It is claimed to be the first time that the red flag was waved as a banner of workers' power. During the Mexican siege of the Alamo in March 1836, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana displayed a plain red flag from the highest church tower in Bejar: its meaning – directed to the Alamo defenders – meant "no surrender; no clemency." At much the same time, the Liberal "Colorados" in the Uruguayan Civil War used red flags. This prolonged struggle at the time got considerable attention and sympathy from liberals and revolutionaries in Europe, and it was in this war that Garibaldi first made a name for himself and that he was inspired to have his troops wear the famous Red Shirts.

In 1870, following the stunning defeat of the French Army by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War, French workers and socialist revolutionaries seized Paris and created the Paris Commune. The Commune lasted for two months before it was crushed by the French Army, with much bloodshed. The original red banners of the Commune became icons of the socialist revolution; in 1921 members of the French Communist Party came to Moscow and presented the new Soviet government with one of the original Commune banners; it was placed (and is still in place) in the tomb of Vladimir Lenin, next to his open coffin.

With the victory of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution of 1917, the red flag, with a hammer to symbolize the workers and sickle to symbolize peasants, became the official flag of Russia, and, in 1923, of the Soviet Union. It remained so until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. After the Communist Party of China took power in 1949, the flag of China became a red flag with a large star symbolizing the Communist Party, and smaller stars symbolizing workers, peasants, the urban middle class and rural middle class. The flag of the Communist Party of China became a red banner with a hammer and sickle, similar to that on the Soviet flag. In the 1950s and 1960s, other Communist regimes such as Vietnam and Laos also adopted red flags. Some Communist countries, such as Cuba, chose to keep their old flags; and other countries used red flags which had nothing to do with Communism or socialism; the red flag of Nepal, for instance, represents the national flower.>>
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Re: APOD: Tianwen-1 Mission to Mars (2020 Jul 25)

Post by neufer » Sat Jul 25, 2020 10:14 pm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavenly_Questions wrote:
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
<<The Heavenly Questions or Questions to Heaven (traditional Chinese: 天問; simplified Chinese: 天问; pinyin: Tiānwèn) is a piece contained in the Classical Chinese poetry collection of Chu Ci. The Heavenly Questions consists of a series of verses, in question format, addressed to Tian, or Heaven. The 172 questions asked revolve around Chinese mythology and ancient Chinese religious beliefs, and perceived contradictions or conundrums existing therein. According to legend, Qu Yuan wrote this series of questions in verse after viewing various scenes depicted on temple murals; specifically, it is said that following his exile from the royal court of Chu, Qu Yuan looked upon the depictions of the ancestors and the gods painted upon the walls of the ancestral temple of Chu; and, then, in response, wrote his questions to Heaven, upon these same walls. China's interplanetary exploration program is named after "Heavenly Questions" (Tianwen) and the first mission Tianwen-1 was launched on July 23, 2020. Two preliminary sites in the Utopia Planitia region of Mars have been chosen for the anticipated landing attempt. Utopia Planitia ("Nowhere Land Plain"—loosely, the plain of paradise) is the Martian region where the Viking 2 lander touched down and began exploring on September 3, 1976.

Other examples of the influence of the Heavenly Questions include the poem written by Li He, which A. C. Graham translates as "Don't Go Out of the Door", which then in turn influenced the lyrics of the Pink Floyd song "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun", attributed to Roger Waters. This translation by Graham features the line: "Witness the man who raved at the wall as he wrote his questions to Heaven". Thus, beginning with the "Heavenly Questions" contained in the Chu Ci anthology of the third or fourth century BCE, then progressing to the eighth or ninth century work of Li He influenced by Qu Yuan's "Heavenly Questions", and continuing on into the twentieth century with Graham's translation, and through the subsequent use of this motif by Roger Waters in the lyrics for a song by the popular music band Pink Floyd, and then subsequently as cover versions of that song in the twenty-first century, "Heavenly Questions" has had a long and enduring influence upon poetry and song.>>
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Re: APOD: Tianwen-1 Mission to Mars (2020 Jul 25)

Post by geckzilla » Sun Jul 26, 2020 12:15 am

Removed two posts discussing politics from the thread. Discussing politics in the forum is against the rules.
Just call me "geck" because "zilla" is like a last name.

anti CCP

Re: APOD: Tianwen-1 Mission to Mars (2020 Jul 25)

Post by anti CCP » Sun Jul 26, 2020 1:40 am

geckzilla wrote: Sun Jul 26, 2020 12:15 am Removed two posts discussing politics from the thread. Discussing politics in the forum is against the rules.
Dear moderator,

Mine was one of the posts you removed. Please accept my apologies. I am an infrequent visitor to the forum and was not aware of the rule. This does not absolve me of my responsibility to adhere to terms of use, however.

If you'll permit me, I would only like to point out to the person who replied to my original post that I did not intend to infer that I would advocate for harm to come to individuals participating in the Chinese space program.

All the best.

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Re: APOD: Tianwen-1 Mission to Mars (2020 Jul 25)

Post by TheZuke! » Sun Jul 26, 2020 3:36 am

天 Tian: "sky/heaven" the ideogram for "big" with a top.
問 Wen: "ask" shows a mouth at a gate/door -a mouth at the gate or door is usually asking for something/someone.
Furthermore,
天安門 Tian'anmen: is made up of the Chinese characters for "heaven", "peace" and "gate" respectively, which is why the name is conventionally translated as "Gate of Heavenly Peace". However, this translation is somewhat misleading, since the Chinese name is derived from the much longer phrase "receiving the mandate from heaven, and pacifying the dynasty". (Wikipedia)

p.s. Note to our "Color Commentator" Ann,
That ideogram 安 "an" "peace/stable" is often used as a "Chinese name" for a Westerner named "Ann" (like my wife :ssmile: )

p.s.2
Thanks neufer for posting the ideograms!

p.s.3 Gentle Readers,
I am not fluent in Mandarin, but have studied it a little.

p.s.4
Geckzilla, this was not intended to be political

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Re: APOD: Tianwen-1 Mission to Mars (2020 Jul 25)

Post by geckzilla » Mon Jul 27, 2020 1:22 am

I mean, yeah, your post wasn't political, Zuke. Discussing language is cool, and I wish we had a better relationship with China. Heck, my spouse is Chinese, if that tells you much. Anyway, carry on.
Just call me "geck" because "zilla" is like a last name.

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Re: APOD: Tianwen-1 Mission to Mars (2020 Jul 25)

Post by neufer » Mon Jul 27, 2020 3:34 am

  • Like the Yutu-2 rover Tianwen-1 will have ground-penetrating radar (GPR) :!:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17262-w wrote:
First look by the Yutu-2 rover at the deep subsurface structure at the lunar farside
Nature Communications volume 11, Article number: 3426 (2020)

by Jialong Lai, Yi Xu, Roberto Bugiolacchi, Xu Meng, Long Xiao, Minggang Xie, Bin Liu, Kaichang Di, Xiaoping Zhang, Bin Zhou, Shaoxiang Shen & Luyuan Xu

Abstract: The unequal distribution of volcanic products between the Earth-facing lunar side and the farside is the result of a complex thermal history. To help unravel the dichotomy, for the first time a lunar landing mission (Chang’e-4, CE-4) has targeted the Moon’s farside landing on the floor of Von Kármán crater (VK) inside the South Pole-Aitken (SPA). We present the first deep subsurface stratigraphic structure based on data collected by the ground-penetrating radar (GPR) onboard the Yutu-2 rover during the initial nine months exploration phase. The radargram reveals several strata interfaces beneath the surveying path: buried ejecta is overlaid by at least four layers of distinct lava flows that probably occurred during the Imbrium Epoch, with thicknesses ranging from 12 m up to about 100 m, providing direct evidence of multiple lava-infilling events that occurred within the VK crater.
..........................................................................
A LPR CH-1 radargram of CE-4 landing site using an Automatic Gain Control (AGC) method for amplitude compensation. The yellow line represents the aggregated data traces to show the enhanced subsurface echoes A–E. This approach also minimizes “anomalous” signal points along the travel path that might arise from the random distribution of rocks and debris among more heterogeneous layers. b Interpreted LPR CH-1 radargram of CE-4 landing site using image enhancement techniques. The cumulative length of the traversed path is 284.6 m. Yellow lines represent enhanced subsurface echoes A–E (a); light blue lines are subtle boundaries denoting differences in “stripe” directions and sharpness; dashed lines denote higher uncertainty in location. The two red vertical lines indicate waypoint 37 and 42, respectively. Please note that LPR data were not collected at a fixed speed. For example, the jump from 180 to 240 m at the end of X axis is because LPR CH-1 collected much fewer data at the end of the traverse path than at the beginning stage when rover traveled around a small crater. The enlarged images of the end of the traverse are given in Supplementary Fig. 3. c The interpreted stratigraphy structure inferred from the LPR results. ε = 4.5(≤52 m) and 6.5(>52 m) is used for time-to-depth conversion.

<<The penetrating depth of LPR CH-1 can reach up to ~330 m, although the top section of the radar signals becomes saturated due to the strong coupling effects from the electromagnetic interaction with the metal in the rover. However, channel two (CH-2) of the LPR data, the center frequency of which is 500 MHz and can penetrate up to ~35 m, can be employed to complement the profile of the close-to-surface section.

The prominent and continuous subsurface reflectors A–E at depths of (A) 51.8 ± 1.1 m, (B) 63.2 ± 1.2 m, (C) 96.2 ± 3.2 m, (D) 130.2 ± 3.7 m, and (E) 225.8 ± 5.5 m can be observed both in the processed radar image and aggregated data traces displayed in terms of signal strength (dB, yellow line) (Fig. 1a). The horizontal reflectors appear relatively constant running parallel to the surface (see Fig. 1), except for the horizontal reflectors D that shows a gradual rise of 7.1 m in the right end. This is probably due to the change in subsurface topography, e.g., crater at depth of 130 m. From around waypoint 42, the reflector D becomes flat, because the rover conducted a local exploration mission to collect other scientific data at the end of the ninth month exploration with consequent little variation of the subsurface topography. Nonetheless, this localized and repeated sampling phase helps to constrain the consistency and reliability of the data gathering process.

The materials between the most prominent horizontals are rather uniform and strong radar echo are rare (e.g., A–B, B–C, C–D in Fig.1b); however, a couple of subtle features stand out at the bottom part region of the radargram using image enhancement technique. Some relatively short lines appear in the D–E strata and more continuous ones occur below reflector E, which are interpreted as ejecta at a different scale. As the thickness of stratum D–E is about 100 m, it is possible that it was formed by multiple lava eruption events interposed by small-scale ejecta deposits or thin regolith that was formed in the lull period: this geologically complex admix may reflect in the scattered features in the radar results as evident in Fig.1b. Alternatively, the large-scale ejecta layers at depths of over 200 m may produce relatively continuous signal discontinuities, but with more pronounced fluctuations than a well-defined interface.>>
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Re: APOD: Tianwen-1 Mission to Mars (2020 Jul 25)

Post by TheZuke! » Mon Jul 27, 2020 1:37 pm

Neufer,
I suspect that Ground Penetrating Radar is not all that "ground breaking".
Mainly because it shows no evidence of the Moon being a hollow metal sphere!
Maybe they need to re-calibrate the instrument or something.
Or it is possible the Earth-observing aliens that live inside the Moon, were aware of this mission and jammed the radar signal? :?:

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'Person, woman, moon men, camera, TV'

Post by neufer » Mon Jul 27, 2020 1:55 pm

Click to play embedded YouTube video.
TheZuke! wrote: Mon Jul 27, 2020 1:37 pm Neufer,

I suspect that Ground Penetrating Radar is not all that "ground breaking".
Mainly because it shows no evidence of the Moon being a hollow metal sphere!

Maybe they need to re-calibrate the instrument or something.

Or it is possible the Earth-observing aliens that live inside the Moon, were aware of this mission and jammed the radar signal? :?:
:arrow: (Hoping this isn't censored for being too political.)
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Re: APOD: Tianwen-1 Mission to Mars (2020 Jul 25)

Post by TheZuke! » Tue Jul 28, 2020 1:40 pm

A slightly technical article about the probes communications...

https://hackaday.com/2020/07/28/what-is ... obe-saying

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Re: APOD: Tianwen-1 Mission to Mars (2020 Jul 25)

Post by neufer » Sun May 16, 2021 1:13 pm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianwen-1 wrote:
<<Tianwen-1 (TW-1; simplified Chinese: 天问; traditional Chinese: 天問; lit. Heavenly Questions) is an interplanetary mission by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) to send a robotic spacecraft to Mars, consisting of an orbiter, deployable camera, lander and the Zhurong rover. The spacecraft, with a total mass of nearly five tons, is one of the heaviest probes launched to Mars and carries 13 scientific instruments.

At 23:18 UTC, on 14 May 2021, the Tianwen-1 lander successfully landed in the preselected landing area in the southern part of the Mars Utopia Planitia. The landing phase began with the release of the protective capsule containing the lander/rover. The capsule made an atmospheric entry followed by a descent phase under parachute, after which the lander used retro-propulsion to soft-land on Mars.

Current plans call for the lander to deploy the rover Zhurong on 22 May 2021. The rover is designed to explore the surface for 90 sols; its height is about 1.85 m and it has a mass of about 240 kg. After the planned rover deployment, the orbiter would serve as a telecommunications relay for the rover while continuing to conduct its own orbital observations of Mars.>>
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Re: APOD: Tianwen-1 Mission to Mars (2020 Jul 25)

Post by neufer » Wed May 19, 2021 7:41 pm

Click to play embedded YouTube video.
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