ESA: Mars Express probe plans to conduct communication test with zhurong Mars rover
2021-10-29
After safely spending a month of sunburn, the Chinese Mars probe tianwen-1 will resume scientific exploration, and will enter the remote sensing orbit in early November to carry out global remote sensing exploration of Mars. While continuing its mission, the Mars rover zhurong operating on the Martian surface will also conduct a test in cooperation with the European Space Agency's Mars Express probe. On October 27, the space operations center of the European Space Agency announced on social media that the "Mars Express" probe of the European Space Agency and China's "zhurong" Mars rover will conduct five communication tests in November and send back data to the earth. This is also the first time in a decade that ESA has had the opportunity to actually test the data blind receiving capability of Mars Express in Mars orbit. According to the document issued by the ESA space operations center, the windows for the five communication tests were selected by the two teams through coordination. The "Mars Express" team determined the time period for the orbiter to fly over the landing area of zhurong, and then the "zhurong" team selected five windows suitable for the Mars Rover Mission. Screenshot of tweets from ESA space operations center When the rover sends back a large amount of scientific data obtained on the surface of Mars to the earth, it usually carries out relay communication with the Orbiter on Mars first, and then sends it to the earth through the orbiter ground communication. For example, China's tianwen-1 orbiter has relay communication capability to send back the scientific data obtained by zhurong to the earth. In the test conducted with ESA, the Mars Express probe of ESA in Mars orbit will play the role of relay communication, receive data from zhurong in a communication window of about 10 minutes and send it back to earth. However, because the communication systems between zhurong and Mars Express are not compatible, the communication test process will be slightly different. According to ESA, generally speaking, when the orbiter flies over the ground patrol, it will send a "hello" signal to the patrol and communicate between initiators; The inspector will then send a response signal to let the surround know that the signal has been received and start exchanging data or receiving instructions. However, in this communication test, zhurong was unable to receive the signal frequency from Mars Express and respond to the latter's "call". Therefore, Mars Express will one-way "blind receive" the data sent by zhurong this time. On June 11, 2021, the "zhurong" Mars rover took a group photo with the lander in the Utopia plain on the surface of Mars ESA said that when Mars Express flies over the area where zhurong is located, it will turn on the radio listening equipment. Once the signal sent by zhurong is detected, it will immediately lock it and start recording data. Both parties will conduct 5 communication tests, and each communication window lasts about 10 minutes. The melacom communication system carried by Mars Express has the function of detecting specific signals, blind receiving and verifying data at the beginning of design, and has been fully tested on earth. However, due to the landing failure of ESA's Mars Lander, they have never had the opportunity to actually use this function in Mars orbit in the past decade. Therefore, ESA said that the test will be a good opportunity to test the blind reception capability of Mars Express. The replica of Beagle 2 lander lost contact during ESA's Mars Express mission in 2003 is from the science museum in London The windows for the five inter device communication tests will be arranged from 20:07 to 20:17 on November 7, from 3:34 to 3:44 on November 17, from 4:27 to 4:37 on November 19, from 5:20 to 5:27 on November 21, and from 6:13 to 6:22 on November 23, Beijing time. The article said that the five communication test windows were selected after coordination between the two teams. The Mars Express team first determined the time period for the spacecraft to fly over the zhurong landing area, and then the zhurong team selected the five windows suitable for the Mars Rover Mission. Before each test, ESA will upload instructions to Mars Express one or two days in advance. ESA said that in order to better evaluate the performance of the data blind reception function, the data transmission from zhurong to Mars Express will be carried out at a relatively slow speed of 8 kilobytes per second in the first test, and the data transmission speed will be gradually increased to 128 kilobytes per second in the subsequent test. ESA predicts that the data sent by zhurong will arrive on earth about two hours after the inter vehicle communication window is closed. Mars Express will relay the received data to the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany, and then forward it to Zhu Rong's team for analysis and research. With regard to China's international cooperation in space missions, Zhang Kejian, director of the National Space Administration, once said that the National Space Administration is willing to cooperate with developed countries and space powers, as well as with some developing countries. China is willing to share space technology with other countries to promote global cooperation and development. (Xinhua News Agency)
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