Recently released images of the Chinese rover landing and initial surface movements;
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57628653

Talking about Mars missions. "BEIJING, June 24 (Reuters) - China aims to send its first crewed mission to Mars in 2033, with regular follow-up flights to follow, under a long-term plan to build a permanently inhabited base on the Red Planet and extract its resources."

I had a feeling they'd get the wrong idea. We shoulda just stuck with "Mars", that's a good enough moniker.

bearnard123 wrote:

Talking about Mars missions. "BEIJING, June 24 (Reuters) - China aims to send its first crewed mission to Mars in 2033, with regular follow-up flights to follow, under a long-term plan to build a permanently inhabited base on the Red Planet and extract its resources."

That's nonsense. They won't even have crew on the moon by then. Anyone who actually follows the Chinese space program knows they are steady and incremental, and just as underfunded as the rest. A robotic sample return from Mars in twelve years would be more than ambitious. Don't trust news articles about Chinese plans; they're overblown click-bait, even from respectable news outlets, as were stories about the USSR during the Cold War. China simply doesn't have the funding or expertise to skip forward in the timeline like that.

As for "permanently inhabited base"... No one will be doing that in your lifetime without a significant leap in technology.

zululima wrote:

That's nonsense. They won't even have crew on the moon by then. Anyone who actually follows the Chinese space program knows they are steady and incremental, and just as underfunded as the rest. A robotic sample return from Mars in twelve years would be more than ambitious. Don't trust news articles about Chinese plans; they're overblown click-bait, even from respectable news outlets, as were stories about the USSR during the Cold War. China simply doesn't have the funding or expertise to skip forward in the timeline like that.

As for "permanently inhabited base"... No one will be doing that in your lifetime without a significant leap in technology.

Agreed.
I suspect that they, the CCP, will try to do something big in 2049. Either by establishing a base on the moon or sending a crew to the RED planet...

zululima wrote:

bearnard123 wrote:

Talking about Mars missions. "BEIJING, June 24 (Reuters) - China aims to send its first crewed mission to Mars in 2033, with regular follow-up flights to follow, under a long-term plan to build a permanently inhabited base on the Red Planet and extract its resources."

That's nonsense. They won't even have crew on the moon by then. Anyone who actually follows the Chinese space program knows they are steady and incremental, and just as underfunded as the rest. A robotic sample return from Mars in twelve years would be more than ambitious. Don't trust news articles about Chinese plans; they're overblown click-bait, even from respectable news outlets, as were stories about the USSR during the Cold War. China simply doesn't have the funding or expertise to skip forward in the timeline like that.

As for "permanently inhabited base"... No one will be doing that in your lifetime without a significant leap in technology.

I can partially agree with you. But China makes now huge leaps in space exploration campaign and in the last decade China advanced. So, I guess we should not underate them

bearnard123 wrote:

zululima wrote:

bearnard123 wrote:

Talking about Mars missions. "BEIJING, June 24 (Reuters) - China aims to send its first crewed mission to Mars in 2033, with regular follow-up flights to follow, under a long-term plan to build a permanently inhabited base on the Red Planet and extract its resources."

That's nonsense. They won't even have crew on the moon by then. Anyone who actually follows the Chinese space program knows they are steady and incremental, and just as underfunded as the rest. A robotic sample return from Mars in twelve years would be more than ambitious. Don't trust news articles about Chinese plans; they're overblown click-bait, even from respectable news outlets, as were stories about the USSR during the Cold War. China simply doesn't have the funding or expertise to skip forward in the timeline like that.

As for "permanently inhabited base"... No one will be doing that in your lifetime without a significant leap in technology.

I can partially agree with you. But China makes now huge leaps in space exploration campaign and in the last decade China advanced. So, I guess we should not underate them

China has made huge leaps with their space program to catch up to 1980's technology. If their espionage game is on point, they might be able to reverse engineer a Falcon 9 by the time it is being retired.

The official Instagram page of NASA published the latest pics from the red planet made by Ingenuity helicopter. The helicopter provided new sight of the different rock layers begin and end. Each layer can give scientists an understanding of how the ancient climate changed. https://www.instagram.com/accounts/logi ... Dcopy_link

Results in from a previous mission;
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57935742

Excellent update on the Chinese Rover from Scott Manley, some fascinating video and images;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSSs6FfBlgY

The Curiosity rover had managed to collect 32 Martian rock samples by using a drill attached to robotic arm. Perseverance rovere mission still keeps searching for signs of past life on the red planet by analyzing the chemical, mineral, physical and organic characteristics of the rocks.

GDB wrote:

Excellent update on the Chinese Rover from Scott Manley, some fascinating video and images;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSSs6FfBlgY

https://asiatimes.com/2021/07/us-blocki ... versities/
It would be interesting to know how many of the engineers and scientists working or have worked on their mission to Mars have studied in the US of A.

bearnard123 wrote:

The Curiosity rover had managed to collect 32 Martian rock samples by using a drill attached to robotic arm. Perseverance rovere mission still keeps searching for signs of past life on the red planet by analyzing the chemical, mineral, physical and organic characteristics of the rocks.

The best part of this accomplishment comes next, something I wouldn't have thought of until I had the rocks in hands..hmmm, how do I get them back home?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-mars- ... n-mission/

wingman wrote:

bearnard123 wrote:

The Curiosity rover had managed to collect 32 Martian rock samples by using a drill attached to robotic arm. Perseverance rovere mission still keeps searching for signs of past life on the red planet by analyzing the chemical, mineral, physical and organic characteristics of the rocks.

The best part of this accomplishment comes next, something I wouldn't have thought of until I had the rocks in hands..hmmm, how do I get them back home?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-mars- ... n-mission/

I do enjoy how very un-NASA like this whole concept is. It reads as if some low level manager was spitballing in a presentation to get his drill added.

We’ll drill the sample! Then…another rover will come get it eventually. And then that rover will launch it! And then some kind of probe will come pick it up from Martian orbit and bring it back! What’s that? Oh…no, we don’t yet have any plans or preliminary designs for any of these except the original rover.

I hope the soil is retrieved by an astronaut walking up to the rover

FGITD wrote:

wingman wrote:

bearnard123 wrote:

The Curiosity rover had managed to collect 32 Martian rock samples by using a drill attached to robotic arm. Perseverance rovere mission still keeps searching for signs of past life on the red planet by analyzing the chemical, mineral, physical and organic characteristics of the rocks.

The best part of this accomplishment comes next, something I wouldn't have thought of until I had the rocks in hands..hmmm, how do I get them back home?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-mars- ... n-mission/

I do enjoy how very un-NASA like this whole concept is. It reads as if some low level manager was spitballing in a presentation to get his drill added.

We’ll drill the sample! Then…another rover will come get it eventually. And then that rover will launch it! And then some kind of probe will come pick it up from Martian orbit and bring it back! What’s that? Oh…no, we don’t yet have any plans or preliminary designs for any of these except the original rover.

I hope the soil is retrieved by an astronaut walking up to the rover

Likely as much a funding issue as anything, though like the helicopter and the Moxie experiment, as much a technology demonstration as exploration asset. The first has gone way beyond expectations and has become an asset on this mission, the second worked too and after a dusty first attempt, the sample collector is working.

I too would like to see a gloved human hand retrieve them, or a big rover and launch to orbit booster put there by a Starship (god it's weird to type that name on a non sci-fi site), on an earlier unmanned mission.
Since this rover was conceived and then approved, the spaceflight world has been turned on it's head.

GDB wrote:

FGITD wrote:

wingman wrote:

The best part of this accomplishment comes next, something I wouldn't have thought of until I had the rocks in hands..hmmm, how do I get them back home?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-mars- ... n-mission/

I do enjoy how very un-NASA like this whole concept is. It reads as if some low level manager was spitballing in a presentation to get his drill added.

We’ll drill the sample! Then…another rover will come get it eventually. And then that rover will launch it! And then some kind of probe will come pick it up from Martian orbit and bring it back! What’s that? Oh…no, we don’t yet have any plans or preliminary designs for any of these except the original rover.

I hope the soil is retrieved by an astronaut walking up to the rover

Likely as much a funding issue as anything, though like the helicopter and the Moxie experiment, as much a technology demonstration as exploration asset. The first has gone way beyond expectations and has become an asset on this mission, the second worked too and after a dusty first attempt, the sample collector is working.

I too would like to see a gloved human hand retrieve them, or a big rover and launch to orbit booster put there by a Starship (god it's weird to type that name on a non sci-fi site), on an earlier unmanned mission.
Since this rover was conceived and then approved, the spaceflight world has been turned on it's head.

And of course it’s the benefit of unmanned missions. Every rover on Mars, even the depleted, abandoned ones are still presumably right where we left them. Even if it takes 25 years (sure hope we’ll have landed there by then though) that rover and sample will still be there. By then it might be easier to have a new rover take a new sample with an internal launch/return system, but if not…the old one is still there.

My friends thought I was making things up when I mentioned how excited I was to see where Starship could take humanity. Might as well be talking about fireball XL5

That’s a very valid point. Space technology of 2021 is a vastly different world than space tech of 2010

GDB wrote:

Likely as much a funding issue as anything, though like the helicopter and the Moxie experiment, as much a technology demonstration as exploration asset.

Well, if you are going to fund a manned mission to Mars, then the soil sample return is also a risk mitigation project that would be crucial to develope return to orbit and Mars or orbital rendezvous techniques.

bt

Against all the odds, Ingenuity has lasted long enough for this to become a potential problem;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omu2PPdqPNU

Not one of the class of 2021 missions but the class of 2018 probe, in it's final period of operation, makes a significant discovery;
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63418056

https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... aters-nasa