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China fully raised and installed the antenna reflector for its Mars exploration mission in Wuqing District, Tianjin Township, North China, on Saturday.
As key equipment for receiving Mars exploration data, the high-performance antenna is 72 meters high and weighs 2,700 tons. Composed of 1,328 high-precision panels, it is approximately the size of nine basketball courts with a diameter of its main reflector of up to 70 meters.
New technologies have been applied in antenna design, according to Li Hongwei, deputy director of the 39th China Electronics Technology Group Corporation Research Institute.
“We use the umbrella structure to support such a large reflector, which weighs 450 tons, and we will do it integrally,” Li said.
The successful lifting and installation lasted over an hour. Further enhancement of the antenna body and equipment debugging will be carried out.
China’s first Mars exploration project will receive data signals from up to 400 million km away, a 1,000-fold increase compared to that of the country’s lunar exploration.
The 70-meter aperture antenna is the largest in the Mars exploration data reception system built by the National Astronomical Observatories (NAOC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
It will constellate with two established antennas from the Miyun District in Beijing and one from Kunming City, Yunnan Province, southwest China, to receive data from the Red Planet.
“The Mars signal is so attenuated that without this large aperture antenna, the task cannot be accomplished,” said Li Chunlai, deputy chief designer of China’s first Mars exploration project. “To receive the signal from the furthest point, we will probably have to use the 50 and 40 meter antennas at Miyun, and the 40 meter antenna at Kunming together at the same time, and synthesize the data to complete the data reception mission. “
Launched in 2018, the antenna project will build the largest single-aperture mobile antenna in Asia, providing a solid foundation for deep space exploration in China.
China established its first Mars exploration mission in 2016, aiming to launch a Mars probe in 2020 and complete orbit, landing, and displacement in a single mission.
