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China lands rover on Mars

bbc.com

161–170 of 359 posts

Re: China lands rover on Mars

#161
post #142

Does anyone have plans to land on Venus? Is that way more difficult or something?

Apart from Venus which is quite interesting, indeed, but very challenging goal, I hope there will be better exploration of Mercury, since it's rich in iron and closest to the Sun. It is a perfect fit for systematic monitoring of Sun's activity. Moreover, such proximity would make the energy density a big advantage in terms of the mission lifetime.

BepiColombo is on the way! We will start getting data back in 2026.

Re: China lands rover on Mars

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Space research in the US started before the Germans joined, but it never worked... The US had to bring Germans to make the whole thing successful.

I think you mean, German Jews brought their innovations to the US because Germany tried to kill them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

Re: China lands rover on Mars

#163
post #159

This is so cool, imagine it would meet Perseverance and the droids would engage in some battle friendly cooperation! Q: Are the landing sites even remotely close to each other? Q: Had any of sides incorporated this somehow unexpected counterpart into their master programs? Can they update the programs at all? Edit: grammar

At least JPL can certainly update the code in its rovers (at least the main programs, probably not various firmware).

I doubt they incorporated the knowledge of another rover in their code but I believe JPL rovers are “driven” by humans and do not explore autonomously. Due to the delay, the commands are slightly higher level (short term setpoints) but the point is that a human would have to command the rover to drive into another; it wouldn’t happen automatically.

Re: China lands rover on Mars

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm to tired for a debate, but this is a start: https://defense.info/re-thinking-strategy/2020/10/the-fight-...

FYI , you know that US was caught spying on other countries, including economical espionage(on Airbus) and I remember I seen recently some video about US getting access to some Russian equipment and the hyper patriotic narrator ... now imagine I would invent some stupid accusation that SpaceX is built on tech stolent from Russia and airbus without any proof just some unrelated links about that a guy maybe stole some…

There is quite a bit of whataboutism when Chinese espionage comes up, however the key difference is that the government has a financial interest in most companies and often shares loot from foreign competitors with local businesses.

Yes, the US, Russia, France, etc. do this too. The big difference is when the government gives Lockheed the design plans for a new Chinese fighter jet the goal is to develop countermeasures and defeats for its technology, not to clone it outright.

Re: China lands rover on Mars

#165

China Daily has a nice animation of the landing process.[1] So far, though, no live video. [1] http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202105/15/WS609f18aaa31024...

Oh, interesting, I thought it would use inflatable balloons for the touchdown.

Re: China lands rover on Mars

#166
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI , you know that US was caught spying on other countries, including economical espionage(on Airbus) and I remember I seen recently some video about US getting access to some Russian equipment and the hyper patriotic narrator ... now imagine I would invent some stupid accusation that SpaceX is built on tech stolent from Russia and airbus without any proof just some unrelated links about that a guy maybe stole some…

There is quite a bit of whataboutism when Chinese espionage comes up, however the key difference is that the government has a financial interest in most companies and often shares loot from foreign competitors with local businesses. Yes, the US, Russia, France, etc. do this too. The big difference is when the government gives Lockheed the design plans for a new Chinese fighter jet the goal is to develop countermeasur…

Nobody is cloning outright. They are all improving. It it not like a copy-paste. More like a clipboard exploit.

Re: China lands rover on Mars

#167

Look all the copy comments aside, the future of the human race is getting off this rock we live on. Congratulations on the success of this mission. It moves all of humanity forward.

Yes!! Moreover, China has optimized the process of massively scale production of everything. This is good as it decreases prices. Seeing it as a global humanity achievement... this is great.

Scale of production has never been the problem, achieving escape velocity is.

We need to invent fuels that weigh less to have any hope of getting enough stuff into space to undertake any seriously large achievements.

Re: China lands rover on Mars

#168
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All things considered, 90 days is pretty good for how harsh of an environment Mars can be. Also, there are dozens of ways to make the mission last longer but no ways of accomplishing that without adding more weight.

This makes me think about the way we define “harsh”. What’s actually so harsh about Mars? Let’s imagine some alien civilization tries to send a probe to Earth, they’d be saying things like: “Dude, that atmosphere is gonna burn our shit up before it even touches ground, if we’re not careful.” “Holy shit, what are these huge animals with long noses and big ears? They’re gonna destroy our probe if they walk over it.” “L…

Well, yeah, their technology would be mostly adapted for their home planet, Earth could be very harsh.

Re: China lands rover on Mars

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I know of, Venus is kinda crazy. 90 ATM pressure, -1 pH acid rain, about 700 K temperatures at night, it's pretty absurd. Unless you want to make a probe out of solid Tungsten, you're probably out of luck. And good luck getting that out of low earth orbit, that would be stupidly heavy.

Would it help to have a burrowing probe? What are the subterranean conditions like?

I believe an airship would have higher chances of survival. If the surface has been that hot for thousands/millions of years, why would the underground be different? Unless you go really deep (hundreds of KM?), which is impossible.

Re: China lands rover on Mars

#170
post #161
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from Venus which is quite interesting, indeed, but very challenging goal, I hope there will be better exploration of Mercury, since it's rich in iron and closest to the Sun. It is a perfect fit for systematic monitoring of Sun's activity. Moreover, such proximity would make the energy density a big advantage in terms of the mission lifetime.

BepiColombo is on the way! We will start getting data back in 2026.

There's a Mercury Flyby in October of this year!

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/bepicolombo/in-depth/

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