China's fully robotic rover on Mars, in longer-than-expected hibernation since May 2022, likely met with excessive accumulation of sand and dust, its mission designer said, breaking months of silence about the status of the vehicle.
The motorised rover Zhurong, named after a mythical Chinese god of fire, was expected to have woken up in December after entering a plannedmode in May 2022 as falling solar radiation with the advent of winter cut its power generation.
An unforeseen pile-up of dust most likely affected power generation and Zhurong's ability to wake up, Chinese state television reported on Tuesday, quoting Zhang.on board a NASA probe orbiting Mars showed the Chinese rover had not moved since at least September, according to official images. Powered by solar energy, Zhurong also looked for signs of ancient life, including any subsurface water and ice, using a ground-penetrating radar.
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