After the completion of multiple integrated trials, China is ready for the launch of its first homegrown premises. Mars mission.
Tianwen-1Consisting of an orbiter, lander, and scout vehicle, it is scheduled to take off in late July or early August, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA). It is speculated that the launch is scheduled for July 23, the opening of the window.
Last Friday (July 17), the fourth Long March-5 rocket, coded as Long March-5 Y4, was vertically transported to the launch area at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province, southern China.
China’s bid to explore Mars involves several other nations for tracking, orbital data transmission, and support of scientific instruments.
Related: From China Tianwen-1 The Mars rover launches this week. This is what it will do.
Ready for launch
In a recent interview with Central China Television (CCTV), Tianwen-1 deputy director Zhang Yu said scientists have jointly tested multiple systems on the Mars mission at all levels and are ready for launch. .
“We have carried out multiple coordinated flight and control maneuvers together with the launch site system, the rocket system and the sounding system, which have verified the validity of the interfaces between the different systems and the flight program, and They also indicated that we are capable of driving our country’s first Mars probe, “said Zhang.
“We format a kinetic orbit model that has [the] the same orbit with the mobile, as well as the corresponding measurement model, “added Zhang.” We then established the corresponding control algorithm to ensure that the probe lands at the designated location on Mars at the designated time, and can automatically capture information, to ensure it can fly and control [its] mission through Mars. “
Related: This is the first photo of China’s Mars explorer to be released in 2020
Control center
To meet the challenges ahead, the Beijing Aerospace Control Center established a Mars Exploration Flight Control Team in early 2018.
CCTV reported that despite the coronavirus pandemic This year, the team has been actively adjusting staffing, coordinating the test and control network, and mapping switch schemes for different sites, to meet the needs of the Mars probe.
The center will also adopt new software and hardware for the flight and control system to ensure the proper functioning of the Chinese-made hardware system.
The Mars mission in China is ambitious, with the goal of orbiting, landing, and roving, a historic all-in-one mission.
To do so, the country has strengthened its deep-space monitoring network capacity to support the Tianwen-1 mission. Once the probe has entered Earth-Mars transfer orbit, the two monitoring stations of the control center, in Kashgar, in the northwestern Uygur autonomous region of Xinjiang, and Jiamusi, in the northeast province of Heilongjiang, will enter in action.
Tracking support
At Largo March-5 At launch, the reinforcement payload protective fairing was seen embellished with logos from European (ESA), French (CNES), Argentine (CONAE) and Austrian (FFG) space agencies, in addition to CNSA.
Tianwen-1 will use ESA’s Estrack communications network, and in several ways.
Estrack’s Kourou ground station in French Guiana, South America, will follow the mission out of China. Extremely accurate navigation / trajectory determination, through ESA stations in Australia and Spain, will also be provided as Tianwen-1 reaches Mars.
Grouping resources
“A successful space trip often means pooling resources, and at ESA we are happy to support the new Martian mission with our Estrack antenna array as well as our Mars Express spacecraft, currently in orbit on the red planet, “Beatriz Arias of ESA told Space.com.
ESA’s Kourou ground station will pick up signals from the spacecraft as it separates from the launcher after takeoff, providing information on the probe’s distance and movements and enabling communications.
After takeoff and until Tianwen-1 enters Martian orbit, ESA’s New Norcia (Australia) and Cebreros (Spain) stations will make a total of eight communication links with the spacecraft to support a technique of determining highly accurate navigation / trajectory known as Delta-DOR (short for “delta differential one-way range”).
Once on the Red Planet, the Mars Express orbiter will provide data relay support, acting as an intermediary, along with the Chinese orbiter, for data collected by the Chinese rover at Martian land and ground stations on Earth, officials at the ESA. However, this is just a backup, as China’s own orbiter will provide the primary relay service.
Argentina, France, Austria
The Argentine National Commission for Space Activities (CONAE) is believed to be linked to Tianwen-1 through a Chinese tracking station installed in Las Lajas, Argentina. The facility played a role in China’s landing of the Chang’e-4 spacecraft on the other side of the moon in January 2019.
The Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP) in Toulouse, France, is collaborating with China on the Tianwen-1 rover.
CNES is the program manager for this collaboration, Sylvestre Maurice of IRAP told Space.com.
“For your Laser Induced Rupture Spectroscopy (LIBS) instrument, we have delivered a calibration target that is a French duplicate of a target that is on [NASA’s] Curiosity [Mars rover]. The idea is to see how the two data sets compare, “said Maurice.
Meanwhile, the Austrian space sector, under the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), is reported to assist in the development of a magnetometer installed in the Chinese Mars orbiter.
The Space Research Institute (Institut für Weltraumforschung, IWF) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Graz confirmed the group’s contribution to the Tianwen-1 magnetometer and helped with the calibration of the flight instrument, explained Andreas Geisler, head of FFG Aeronautics and Space agency.
“The Aviation and Space Agency of the Austrian Agency for Research Promotion has framed the cooperation on the basis of an agency-to-agency memorandum of understanding (MoU) with CNSA,” Geisler told Space.com.
Leonard David is the author of “Moon Rush: The New Space Race” (National Geographic, 2019). A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us on @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. This version of the story posted on Space.com.
