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China IS building a mars rover!

xenomorph555

By xenomorph555
in Science & Spaceflight

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xenomorph555

xenomorph555

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What you are about to see is a prototype for China's mars rover which I'm guessing got political backing recently. The engineers have always pushed for a mars program but the politicians never had any interest... UNTIL INDIA!

Hehe, anyway while nothing is completely confirmed this rover came out of the blue at one of China's many aerospace conventions.

Follow this link: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/photo/2014-11/04/c_133765462.htm

This is the cutest rover I have ever seen :3 (sorry yutu :S)

I wonder what he will be named...

EDIT: there is also a vague confirmation of a mars program.

Edited by xenomorph555
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Kryten

Kryten

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This is just an industry show exhibit, right? You can find moon base models for multiple countries produced under similar circumstances. While there probably is a plan for Mars missions in the near future, I highly doubt this thing has any real connection to it.

Edited by Kryten
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xenomorph555

xenomorph555

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Well it is built by the Shanghai Aerospace Systems Engineering Research Institute, so that is more then just some model thrown together with no reason. Your most likely right although at least it shows a growing interest in mars for China, before you would just get some weird moon rover like the triclops:

U491P886T1D108851F12DT20140410135818.jpg

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Beowolf

Beowolf

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What you are about to see is a prototype for China's mars rover

Cute little bug. :) I do hope they'll change the wheels, though. Looks too close to the troublesome Curiosity design. Though maybe they'd be fine on a lighter rover.

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Godot

Godot

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Cute little bug. :) I do hope they'll change the wheels, though. Looks too close to the troublesome Curiosity design. Though maybe they'd be fine on a lighter rover.

Well, if the wheel design is the one that works best for Mars, there doesn´t seem to be a reason to change it.

(at least it is a design proven to work well on Mars, as Curiosity shows)

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Mazon Del

Mazon Del

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The issue is not with the wheel design exactly, more with how thin the wheel metal is. A couple microns in many locations.

I also have to say that as an engineer, curved surfaces on size/mass constrained objects have always irked me. Sure in some applications you need them (underwater vehicles), but if you can do without them this is always best. Curved locations WILL result in wasted space because almost all components you are going to deal with are going to be regular shapes in the sense of flat sides and whatnot.

Of course even inside a flat box there is wasted space, but...curves man....I hate them....on robots anyway. ;D

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Mazon Del

Mazon Del

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I would rather love it if the rover happened to land close enough to one of the current ones for them to meet up and take pictures, even if only at long range.

I could imagine NASA programming the rover to spell out "HI" in cursive.

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xenomorph555

xenomorph555

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UPDATE:

Okay a few things.

1. This rover is the leading rover of the designs so far.

2. It is part of the 2nd generation of prototypes (they have built a few different ones by different institutes).

3. It is confirmed to be part of the now confirmed 2020 mars mission (same year as Discovery :D ).

4. This one is developed by the Yutu team.

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Kryten

Kryten

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2020 Mars mission of what type? Manned or unmanned?

Uncrewed with rover. Orbital mission is going to go beforehand, but we don't know if that's to be 2016 or 2018; they're to present a 'Mars craft' at the Zuhai airshow, so I'm pretty sure we'll get a date then.

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xenomorph555

xenomorph555

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Uncrewed with rover. Orbital mission is going to go beforehand, but we don't know if that's to be 2016 or 2018; they're to present a 'Mars craft' at the Zuhai airshow, so I'm pretty sure we'll get a date then.

Actually they are going to do a orbital+landing+rover super mission with a similar strategy to Mars 2/3.

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Moar Boosters

Moar Boosters

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The issue is not with the wheel design exactly, more with how thin the wheel metal is. A couple microns in many locations.

I also have to say that as an engineer, curved surfaces on size/mass constrained objects have always irked me. Sure in some applications you need them (underwater vehicles), but if you can do without them this is always best. Curved locations WILL result in wasted space because almost all components you are going to deal with are going to be regular shapes in the sense of flat sides and whatnot.

Of course even inside a flat box there is wasted space, but...curves man....I hate them....on robots anyway. ;D

It's just a box to make it look snazzy. The size is always going to be dictated by the pointy-outy bits like the wheels, panels and antenna, and it'll be the first thing to go once they start looking for areas to cut weight.

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xenomorph555

xenomorph555

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The actual CAST Mars rover model at Zuhai can be seen in
video. As I suspected, it doesn't look like the one in the OP.

The original one we saw as stated was one of many prototypes, possibly it would launch in the future. But this definitely is the 2018-20 rover.

Very Yutu based.

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