China National Space Administration released today its first picture of Mars taken by Tianwen-1, its spacecraft heading to Mars, which is on course to enter an orbit around Mars around Feb, 10, on the eve of the Chinese New Year. CSNA reported that “Tianwen 1 has flown for 197 days and more than 465 million km on its journey to the planet. It is now around 184 million km from Earth and 1.1 million km from Mars.” The picture was taken at around 2.2 million km from Mars, it reported. See: https://www.space.com/china-tianwen-1-mission-first-mars-photo
Back on Earth, all necessary final checks on the new, 70-meter diameter steerable reflector antenna built especially for this mission—China’s first ever to Mars—were completed yesterday, and it is ready to start receiving data from the mission, Global Times reported last night.
China began construction on this antenna, now the largest steerable antenna in Asia, in October 2018. The diameter of the main reflector is about the size of 10 basketball courts; it is 230 feet high, weighs 2,700 tons, and is made up of 1,328 high-precision panels. China has other steerable antennas with diameters of between 35 meters and 50 meters, but they are not big enough to meet the requirements for data collection when Mars is farthest from the Earth. (As the CNSA reminded in its note today, depending on the two planets’ orbits, Mars is between 55 and 400 million km from Earth.) All four of these antennas, including the new one, can now be linked to maximize data reception capabilities.
If China were unable to receive the scientific exploration data from the mission, our Mars mission would be “a meaningless failure,” Li Chunlai, the Deputy Chief Designer told South China Morning Post. [https://www.scmp.com/video/china/3120558/china-readies-massive-antenna-tianwen-1-mars-mission-nears-orbit-around-red]
As it nears Mars’ gravitational field, “various payloads onboard the spacecraft will be turned on one after another and return data,” which means that the “busiest working hours” have come for the antenna, Wang Yanan, chief editor of Beijing-based Aerospace Knowledge magazine, told the Global Times.
The mission has been given a beautiful name: Tianwen translates into “quest for heavenly truth.”
