Nature talks to Zhang Rongqiao, architect of the China National Space Administration’s Tianwen-1 mission, which landed the Zhurong rover on Mars.
Credit: Xinhua/Shutterstock
In May, China landed a rover on Mars, completing the most difficult stretch of its mission to send an orbiter, lander and rover to the red planet. It was China’s first independent mission to Mars, and made the country only the second, after the United States, to successfully place a rover on the planet.’s 10 — a list of ten people who helped to shape science in 2021.
As the programme’s chief designer, I am responsible for engineering development, spacecraft launch and flight control. Once the mission was in flight, I had to keep track of the spacecraft’s status, find the right people to deal with emergencies and ensure that the probe remained in good working condition, so that our rover could successfully land on Mars and achieve its objectives.
It has continued to travel to the suspected coastline of an ancient sea and ancient land in the southern part of Utopia Planitia, in Mars’s northern hemisphere, to conduct scientific exploration and find clues to uncover the mystery of the origin and evolution of Mars.Our challenge of going to Mars was enormous. For example, there are many unknowns about its surface topography, climate and environment. We do not even know what we do not know about.
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