China's Space Program News Thread

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Colonel
View attachment 73248 That's the reason why NASA choose the sky crank when landing a heavy rover

That looks to be caused by the blast of the retrorocket engine during landing.

The rim of the blast crater extends until the landing pads.

Looks like a large-sized crumb of debris has come to rest near one of the pad. Luckily the lander didn't get obstructed by it during the landing. It could have caused the lander to be elevated on that side of the pad.
 

Kejora

Junior Member
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That looks to be caused by the blast of the retrorocket engine during landing.

The rim of the blast crater extends until the landing pads.

Looks like a large-sized crumb of debris has come to rest near one of the pad. Luckily the lander didn't get obstructed by it during the landing. It could have caused the lander to be elevated on that side of the pad.
Perhaps the reason why NASA uses multiple small rockets instead of one
insightlanding.jpg
 

Temstar

Brigadier
Registered Member
Maybe the rover can drive back over the camera and pick up the camera magnetically? If this is the only detachable camera the rover has, one might expect the mission plan to save the camera for later use?


Normally a rover should first do the things necessary to complete its core mission, taking care not to endanger the rover or any of its equipment. Once the core mission is complete Then the controllers can be a little more adventurous and go for bonus results that might be difficult and endanger the rover. It seems a third eye that can be set on the ground might be more useful at a time when the rover is doing difficult things that might endanger the rover by getting it stuck.
The Tianwen-1 orbiter (plus lander and rover) also did this, ejecting two small cameras in deep space so they could float some distance away and take photos of the spacecraft.

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had a video where he interviewed one of the guy on the team and they discussed the deep space selfies. He said given payload mass is so precious wouldn't it be better if the camera were tethered and can be reeled back in after taking the selfies and the guy shrugged and basically said "meh, they're little disposable cameras, they are quite cheap and small so who cares."

Both the orbiter and rover probably aren't planning to take many selfies from distance so getting up a more complex system to reuse the cameras wasn't considered worth it.
 
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