China’s Zhurong Rover successfully lands on Mars

China became the second country in the world, the United States, to successfully land a rover on Mars after its Zhurong craft touched down on the red planet recently.

Named after the Chinese god of fire, Zhurong was aboard the Tianwen-1 spacecraft that launched from the Wenchang spacecraft launch site in China, on July 23, 2020. It entered Mars’ orbit in February.

The rover will spend about 93 Mars days (about 90 Earth days) surveying an area of the planet known as Utopia Planitia, the same area Perseverance landed on in February, to look at Mars’ composition and evidence of water and ice. The rover is about the size of a small car and has a ground-penetrating radar, a laser and sensors to gauge the atmosphere and magnetic sphere.

More animation spin-offs from Nintendo

Nintendo is considering going into new avenues and animation will be a bigger part of the company’s future plans.

Their current project is the upcoming Super Mario animated feature, being produced by Illumination Entertainment (Despicable Me, Minions), and due to come out next year.

The success of Nintendo’s 2019 feature Detective Pikachu, which grossed $433 million worldwide, showed that there’s demand for more content based on the characters it owns. The company has a rich and beloved catalogue of characters, and opening it up to Hollywood will not only excite audiences, but also creators who want to work with the company’s characters.

Hotel Transylvania: Transformania’s amazing trailer

Sony Pictures released the trailer for Hotel Transylvania: Transformania, the fourth in the series, set to open in theatres on July 23.

In Transformania, Jonathan (voice of Andy Samberg) feels out of place in Dracula (voice of Adam Sandler)’s castle because he is not a monster himself. Van Helsing (voice of Jim Gaffigan) tries his transformation ray on Jonathan.

The transformation ray causes more havoc as Jonathan transforms into a variety of monsters. The ray makes Dracula human so he can be safe in the daylight, and the other monsters transform, too.

The first Hotel Transylvania opened in 2012, where Dracula runs a resort for fellow monsters. In the original film, Jonathan came for a vacation and fell for Dracula’s daughter, Mavis (voice of Selena Gomez). Jonathan has been part of the Hotel Transylvania ever since.

Published in Dawn, Young World, May 29th, 2021