China’s Mars mission failure: NASA Images show China's Mars Rover hasn’t moved an inch in months

The fate of China’s Zhurong Mars rover has been called into question. Due to a dust storm and freezing temperatures, the solar-powered rover went into slumber in May last year and started to have some issues.

The rover hasn’t moved since at least early September 2022, according to a series of photographs acquired by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

China’s Zhurong Mars rover may have broken down
On Tuesday, the HiRise team at the University of Arizona delivered three different perspectives on Zhurong. To MRO’s HiRise camera, Zhurong appears as a pinkish dot.

Dunes and a crater may be seen in the surrounding area of Mars’ Utopia Planitia. The first photograph was taken on March 11, 2022, the second on September 8, 2022, and the most current on February 7, 2023. The rover appears to be in the same location in the last two photos, which does not speak well for its future.

Because the Chinese National Space Agency is notoriously secretive about its activities, formal statements concerning missions are rare. CNSA has not provided any recent information on Zhurong.

Also read: NASA's Curiosity Rover discovers more organic compounds on Mars, which could once have been food for ancient life

In the vicinity of Mars’ Utopia Planitia, dunes and a crater may be observed. The first image was captured on March 11, 2022, the second on September 8, 2022, and the most recent on February 7, 2023. The latest two photographs show the rover in the same spot, which does not bode well for its future.

China’s silence over the rover breaking down
Because the Chinese National Space Agency is famously secretive about its operations, explicit mission statements are uncommon. CNSA has not released any new information about Zhurong.

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Curiosity rover making headlines
NASA’s Curiosity rover has been exploring Mars’ Gale Crater for nearly a decade. It may be a veteran of Mars, but it still has some surprises in store, such as an old lake bed in an unexpected location.

The rover captured images of magnificent rocks that reveal unmistakable traces of water from Mars’ distant past. “Billions of years ago, waves on the surface of a small lake churned up material at the lake bottom, eventually leaving rippling patterns in rock,” NASA explained in a statement on Wednesday.

Curiosity is making its way up the lowest tiers of Mount Sharp, the crater’s huge centre mountain. One of the rover’s primary objectives is to determine whether this region was formerly hospitable for microbial life. Knowing the crater’s water history is a critical component of the endeavour.

“This is the finest evidence of water and waves we’ve seen on Mars,” Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada said. “We went through hundreds of feet of lake sediments and never saw anything like this — and now we’ve found it in a region we thought would be dry.”

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