China's Zhurong Mars rover may be unable to wake up from its hibernation. China's Zhurong Mars Rover may be oversleeping on the job. NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recently confirmed that China's Zhurong rover has been stationary for months since its hibernation in May 2022, during the Martian winter.
Mars has always been a source of wonder for many space enthusiasts. While practical entrepreneurs plan to mine the Moon and the asteroids, others dream of exploring the Red Planet and, eventually, making it a second home.
Robert Zubrin envisions Mars as the next frontier, serving the Earth as a place to go and make a new start much as the Americas did 200 or so years ago. SpaceX’s Elon Musk
So far Mars has only been visited by machines, humanity’s surrogates that fly by it, orbit it and land and roll across its landscape. Last July a fleet of three such spacecraft, one from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), one from China and one from NASA, departed Earth for Mars. Now, in February 2021, all three spacecraft have arrived at the Red Planet. Mars is being invaded by Earth.