Skip to main content

China’s first Mars rover to be named after the fire god Zhurong

A Long March-5 rocket, carrying an orbiter, lander, and rover as part of the Tianwen-1 mission to Mars, lifts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Centre in southern China’s Hainan Province on July 23, 2020. Noel Celis/Getty Images

NASA’s Perseverance rover will soon have a new companion on the red planet, as China is set to send its first Mars rover to the planet’s surface as early as next month. The Tianwen-1 mission launched in July last year, arriving at Mars in February this year, and the spacecraft has already shared an image of Mars taken as it approached its destination. But the real challenge of the mission is still ahead, with the plan to land a rover on the planet in May or June.

China’s space agency, the China National Space Administration (CNSA), recently announced the name for the little machine which is set to become China’s first Mars rover. It will be called Zhurong, after a fire god from traditional Chinese legends.

The name was announced at the 2021 China Space Conference in Nanjing. The name was chosen to compliment the Chinese name for Mars, Huoxing, which means planet of fire.

“Naming China’s first Mars rover after the god of fire signifies igniting the flame of China’s planetary exploration,” said Wu Yanhua, deputy director of the CNSA, as reported by Chinese state media agency Xinhua. He also described how the name Zhurong is made up of the terms “Zhu,” meaning wish, and “Rong,” meaning cooperation, in the spirit of the peaceful exploration of space.

Landing a rover on Mars is extremely challenging, due to not only the thin atmosphere and variable wind and dust storms but also due to the communication delay between the planet and Earth. This means that rovers must land autonomously, without being guided in real time.

CNSA estimates that the landing process of Zhurong will take seven to eight minutes, in which the craft will make use of a parachute and retrorocket to slow its descent through the atmosphere and aim for a soft landing on the surface. The landing area in the southern region of Utopia Planitia, the largest impact basin on Mars, was explored by the NASA Viking 2 lander in the 1970s.

The Tianwen-1 mission aims to investigate this area to learn about the surface and sub-surface of the region, including its composition and the presence of water ice there.

Georgina Torbet
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
NASA’s damaged Ingenuity helicopter spotted in Mars rover photo
A Mars landscape with NASA's Ingenuity helicopter in the background.

A Mars landscape with NASA's Ingenuity helicopter seen on the dune in the distance. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

NASA’s Mars rover, Perseverance, has captured an image (above) showing the final resting place of the damaged Mars helicopter, Ingenuity.

Read more
NASA says goodbye to Mars helicopter Ingenuity after an incredible 72 flights
NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter unlocked its rotor blades, allowing them to spin freely, on April 7, 2021, the 47th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.

It's a sad day for space fans, as the plucky little helicopter Ingenuity has finally come to the end of its mission on Mars. The helicopter will not be making anymore flights due to damage to one of its rotors that occurred during a recent landing, NASA said in an announcement on Thursday, January 25.

The mission was originally planned to make just five flights and to last 30 days, but has been successful beyond what anyone had imagined. The helicopter has made a total of 72 flights over the course of its three-year mission, which began when it was set down on the surface of Mars by the Perseverance rover. The rover arrived on Mars with the helicopter tucked up underneath its belly in February 2021, and Ingenuity sat on the surface for the first time in April 2021. It then made history by becoming the first rotorcraft to fly on another planet with its maiden flight.

Read more
NASA regains communications with Mars helicopter Ingenuity
The Ingenuity helicopter is pictured on the surface of Mars.

Just a few days after losing contact with the Mars helicopter Ingenuity, NASA announced that it has regained communications with the plucky little helicopter. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which designed and operated the helicopter, announced that it is back in touch following an unexpected communications dropout.

The Ingenuity helicopter is pictured on the surface of Mars. NASA

Read more