Now China has become the second country in the world to successfully land on Mars after the United States. Tianwen 1 not only successfully landed on the surface of Mars, but also released the Zhu Rong rover. In this process, a key material is indispensable. It is the aerogel material independently developed by China. It is lighter than air, but it can escort the rover. Because the density is lower than air, so this material is crushed by hand, so why can it escort the rover? How big is this material?

Aerogel is a solid substance and also the world's least dense solid. Its weight per cubic meter is only 3kg. The common aerogel is silicon aerogel. Of course, there are many different types of products such as carbon system, sulfur system, metal oxide system and metal system. Because the quality of aerogel is slightly lower than that of air, it is also called frozen smoke or blue smoke, at the same time, the particles inside it are very small, only nano-scale, so the scattering of visible light is very weak, just like sunlight passing directly through the air.

So what role can this material play on the rover? Although aerogel looks fragile, it is actually very strong and durable. It can withstand the pressure of thousands of times its own quality, and it will melt only when the temperature exceeds 1200 degrees Celsius. It has good insulation and heat insulation effect. Its insulation ability is even 39 times stronger than the best glass fiber. These physical properties also make aerogel an indispensable key material in space launch, for example, the US space probe and the Russian Mir space station both use aerogel as heat insulation material, so it is not surprising that they appear on the Chinese Mars rover.
In addition to aerogel can be used to protect Mars rovers, an American company even plans to use aerogel to develop Mars spacesuits. At present, only three countries in the world have manned spaceflight capabilities, but the spacesuits of these countries are all bloated. It is not convenient to move in space. If you want to work on Mars, it is not appropriate to wear a heavy spacesuit, so the US Space Agency has already planned, let the future astronauts on Mars directly wear aerogel spacesuits, only need to add an 18mm thick aerogel layer to the spacesuits, which can withstand the high temperature of 1300 degrees Celsius and the ultra-low temperature of minus 130 degrees Celsius. It is definitely an ideal material for making spacesuits.

Of course, the role of aerogel is far more than some. As a new material, scientists also consider making aerogel play a positive role in environmental protection, such as dealing with atmospheric and marine pollution. Because there are a large number of small holes on the surface of aerogel, it has a good adsorption effect. Therefore, in the face of marine pollution, the adsorption device made of aerogel can be used to deal with the pollution problem, so as to protect the marine ecological environment, there have been many serious oil spills on the earth, and almost every oil spill will lead to serious ecological disasters, but if there is aerogel, these disasters can be minimized.
At present, human research on aerogels is far from over. In addition to trying to develop lighter aerogel materials, they are also thinking about how to manufacture aerogels on a large scale. Previously, the main method for preparing aerogels was to remove the solvent in the gel and then retain the complete skeleton. This process is obviously not suitable for large-scale preparation. Therefore, scientists are now trying to use a freeze-drying method without templates, the aqueous solution in which graphene and carbon nanotubes are dissolved is freeze-dried at low temperature to facilitate the production of carbon sponges, and this technology can also adjust the shape at will, making the production process faster and making large-scale production possible.