The Trailblazer has made a new friend on Mars! Old friend the Wit is having problems and is about to be abandoned

The Trail rover traveling near the western deltaic remains of Mars' Jezero crater recently unintentionally made a new friend, a new friend born and raised on Mars, and an old friend, the Mars Helicopter of Wit, who keeps having problems and may be on the verge of being abandoned.

Let's not overthink it. This new friend is not a man-made Mars rover or a legendary "Martian", but a Martian rock that has been traveling with the Trailblazer for more than four months.

In February, the rover, which has been updated with autopilot software, has been given a lot of power, and its speed has increased dramatically. It previously traveled only 100 meters per Mars day, but now it can easily travel more than 400 meters per Mars day, far faster than the other two rovers on Mars.

The Chinese Zhu Rong Mars rover travels only a few dozen meters per Mars day and has accumulated about 2 kilometers in the past 347 Mars days. The U.S. Curiosity Mars rover travels about 100 meters per Mars day and has accumulated 28.13 kilometers in 3495 Mars days, but Trail has accumulated 11.76 kilometers in 464 Mars days.

In February this year, the Trailblazer Mars rover was driving fast when a rock suddenly jumped into its left front wheel inner groove. Self-portrait photos from Trailblazer's left hazard avoidance camera showed that the rock was about the size of a potato, similar to the rocks we usually see on Earth.

The rock has no impact on Trailblazer's wheels but instead has become its travel companion. For the past four months, the rover has been moving around Mars' Jezero crater, with its "new friend" rolling on the inside of its wheels.

This is also considered to happen on Mars good fate because the Martian rocks are not so friendly to other Mars rovers, the U.S. Courage Mars rover landed on the world of Mars in 2004, 2010 unfortunately into the soft sand silent, once a potato-sized rock into the right rear wheel groove stuck, resulting in the wheels can not move, NASA engineers had to think of ways to move the rock away.

Trailblazer's old friend, the Wit, has problems

The Mars rover also has an "old friend," the 1.4 kg Jiji Mars helicopter, which was the first Mars helicopter to fly near the rover from the time it landed on Mars.

The helicopter took a lot of photos of the Martian terrain from an overhead perspective, which helped NASA's team of engineers plan a route for the Trailblazer rover to travel faster.

But on May 3 of this year, the Jiji Mars helicopter suddenly had a power shortage problem, resulting in communication interruptions. It was running fine before, so why is it suddenly without power now? There are two aspects of the problem.

One, the northern hemisphere of Mars into the cold winter, light weakening, Jazzero crater is located in the northern hemisphere of Mars, according to information shared by NASA, with coordinates of 77.42 ° E, 18.45 ° N, that is, 18.45 ° degrees north latitude, wit through solar cells to get power, light weakening led to a major reduction in power.

Second, the wit has a very power-consuming instrument - a heater, to ensure the normal operation of the lithium-ion battery, the wit specially prepared a heater for the lithium-ion, as long as the surface temperature of Mars is below -15 ℃, the heater will automatically work.

After the arrival of the Martian winter, the Martian night temperature was even below -80 ℃, which led to the wit on the heater working for a long time, consuming a lot of power.

Although NASA engineers changed the trigger temperature of the wit heater to -80 ℃, but the power supply problem is still not solved, has been in a state of power shortage, there is not enough power to carry out the mission, had to stay in place.

The wit is about to be abandoned

The Mars helicopter is an old friend of the Trailblazer, and the communication distance between the Trailblazer and the Jiji cannot exceed 1 km.

Currently, the rover is on a slope at the foot of Delta Ruins, a plateau above the floor of Jezero Crater, and has not yet begun exploring Delta Ruins.

But the problem is, the Mars winter is longer than the Earth winter, the Earth winter is about 3 months, but the Mars winter is up to 6 months, the next 6 months, the Jiji Mars helicopter may not be able to fly again, do the Trailblazer Mars rover just wait forever? Therefore, the wit is about to be abandoned.

The Mars helicopter has already flown 28 missions, far exceeding its design life of five flights, so it makes sense that even if the rover is now ruthless enough to abandon its old friend, the Mars helicopter will have a new friend, a Martian rock.