Daily Archives: January 22, 2023

China's Zhurong Mars rover remains silent despite being expected to wake up in December but there's still hope that the vehicle could rise from its slumber.

Zhurong is part of Tianwen 1, China's first interplanetary mission, which also includes a Mars orbiter. The rover touched down on the Red Planet's Utopia Planitia back in May 2021 and conducted a range of science and exploration activities before entering a dormant state in May 2022 to wait out the cold, harsh winter in the northern hemisphere of Mars.

Zhurong was expected to wake up in December, around the time of the Mars spring equinox. So far, however, there has been silence from both the rover and its operators in China, with reports that the spacecraft could be in trouble.

Related: China's 1st Mars rover and Tianwen 1 orbiter may have gone silent

Yet hope remains that Zhurong is simply experiencing colder than expected conditions and may still wake itself up and resume activities.

Jia Yang, a Tianwen 1 mission deputy chief designer, told (opens in new tab) reporters in September 2022 that Zhurong would wake up autonomously when two conditions are met. These are a temperature of greater than 5 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 15 degrees Celsius) and energy generation of greater than 140 watts.

Weather data from NASA's Perseverance rover which is nuclear-powered and has not needed to hibernate reveals that temperatures in Mars' Jezero Crater have only briefly risen higher than this lowest heat requirement. Perseverance is also some seven degrees latitude south of Zhurong and thus closer to the Martian equator, meaning it may also be experiencing slightly more favorable conditions than China's rover.

The other factor affecting Zhurong is that dust storms may have deposited Martian sand onto Zhurong's solar arrays, hindering its ability to generate power and wake itself up. The rover's butterfly-shaped solar panels use anti-dust material, and Zhurong is equipped with a vibrating function to shake off accumulated dust. However, the rover will need to be active to employ this latter measure.

Time will tell if Zhurong will roll along the Martian surface once more, but the mission has already been a huge success. The landing made China the second country to successfully operate a rover on Mars after the U.S., and both Zhurong and the Tianwen 1 orbiter have completed their primary missions.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) and on Facebook (opens in new tab).

Visit link:
Will China's Zhurong Mars rover wake from worrying hibernation ...

Noon Energy, which has developed ultra-low-cost, high energy density carbon-oxygen battery technology for long-duration energy storage for solar and wind power, today announced that its secured $28 million in Series A financing to commercialize its technology.

Boston-based Clean Energy Ventures and Aramco Ventures new Sustainability Fund (as in, Saudi oil Aramco) led the round. Noon Energy previously closed on a $3million seed round in April 2021.

Chris Graves, Noon Energys founder andCEO (pictured above center), launched the company in 2018 after helping to develop NASAs Mars Perseverance rover MOXIE device, which produces oxygen from the Martian carbon dioxide atmosphere.

The 10-person team at Noon Energy has since developed a battery that stores energy in carbon and oxygen using nature-based chemistry principles. So metals such as lithium and cobalt arent needed, and Noon Energy says its battery requires just 1% of other critical elements compared to lithium-ion batteries.

The Palo Alto-based startup says its battery offers more than 100 hours of energy storage at at one-tenth the cost of lithium-ion batteries for long-duration storage. And because its extremely dense, that means a compact footprint three times smaller than current lithium-ion batteries.

In the past 14 months, Noon Energy says its team has achieved a 50x scale-up of its core technology and that it plans to bring its battery to market in two years.

David Miller, cofounder and managing partner at Clean Energy Ventures, said:

Noon Energys technology has far greater potential as modular, scalable, and low-cost long-duration energy storage than any other approach weve ever seen, and therefore can enable any system, from a single home, to an entire grid, to run on 100% solar and wind.

Noons approach to long-duration storage is not only inspiring but proven, and we look forward to supporting this world-class team as they continue to scale and enable 100% renewables penetration.

Noon Energys website gives very little away, but its hiring in order to scale up. Its next move will be to build demonstration products to test its carbon-oxygen batteries in the field.

Read more: This game-changing big brick toaster battery is now on the market

Photo: Noon Energy

UnderstandSolar is a free service that links you to top-rated solar installers in your region for personalized solar estimates. Tesla now offers price matching, so its important to shop for the best quotes.Click here to learn more and get your quotes. *ad.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Originally posted here:
A Mars rover scientist is about to scale carbon-oxygen batteries