Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Credit: ESA/Alex Lutkus

This November, the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft carried out a series of experimental communication tests with the Chinese (CNSA) Zhurong Mars rover.

Mars Express successfully caught data sent up ‘in the blind’ by the rover and relayed them to Earth where they were forwarded to the Zhurong rover team in China.

Lander and Zhurong Mars rover.
Credit: CNSA/Inside Outer Space screengrab

The experiments culminated in a successful test on November 20, ESA announced today.

Good quality data

“Mars Express successfully received the signals sent by the rover, and our colleagues in the Zhurong team confirmed that all the data arrived on Earth is very good quality.” says ESA’s Gerhard Billig.

Credit: ESA

The data relayed by Mars Express arrived on Earth at ESA’s ESOC space operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany, via deep-space communication antennas. From there, these data were forwarded to the Zhurong team at the Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Center, who confirmed the success of the test.

“We’re looking forward to carrying out more tests in the future,” Billig adds, “to continue to experiment and further improve this method of communicating between space missions.”