CNN —China’s Zhurong rover on Mars has been in hibernation since last May due to an “unpredictable accumulation” of dust, mission designer Zhang Rongqiao said, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported on Tuesday. “According to our analysis, the biggest possibility is that because of unpredictable accumulation of Martian dust, its power generation capacity was reduced and it was too low to wake itself up,” Rongqiao said, explaining why the rover has since been dormant. This image showing the rover and the lander on the surface of Mars was taken by a separable camera deployed by the Zhurong rover in 2021. The NASA InSight lander’s mission came to an end in December after spending nearly 1,500 days on Mars. But a heavy accumulation of dust on its solar panels caused a steady drop in the lander’s power source.

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