Author Topic: LIVE: Chang'e-3 lunar probe and rover Lunar Landing December 14, 2013  (Read 717523 times)

Offline jumpjack

  • Full Member
  • **
  • Posts: 245
  • rome-italy
  • Liked: 1
  • Likes Given: 0
New chinese threads:
 Chang E on the 3rd lunar mission tracing stickers
http://bbs.9ifly.cn/thread-12952-1-1.html

(some FAQs in this post: http://bbs.9ifly.cn/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=12952&pid=279639&fromuid=27122  =

Chang E two lunar rover: "rabbit" rover will patrol May 5 km2
http://bbs.9ifly.cn/thread-364-1-1.html


-- Jumpjack --

Offline Warren Platts

Although the landing area has always (last few years) been described just as Sinus Iridum, it has also always extended into Mare Imbrium.  There's a good reason - this is one of the areas on the Moon where basalt flows of two very distinct colors are visible.  Clementine multispectral data show it very clearly.  The area imaged at high resolution by Chang'E 2 extends from this landing site on the younger basalt unit deep into Sinius Iridum proper, onto the older basalt unit.  There is a boundary between the units only a few km north of Yutu right now, so it will probably drive across it to analyze both units and use radar to probe the boundary between them.  But I expect Chang'E 4 to land on the other unit, actually in Sinus Iridum.

Dr. Spudis just weighed in on the Mare Imbrium landing site:

http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/2013/12/a-new-site-to-explore-on-the-moon/
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline jumpjack

  • Full Member
  • **
  • Posts: 245
  • rome-italy
  • Liked: 1
  • Likes Given: 0
the landing video is now more conveniently on Youtube

Incredible Video! Possibly the best Lunar landing footage ever!
Headache.
Can't it be rotated 180°?
I did it with VirtualDub, but I also speeded up first part by 12x, and now I am not able to join the 120fps part to the 10fps part...
But this way it is much better to see.
-- Jumpjack --

Offline jumpjack

  • Full Member
  • **
  • Posts: 245
  • rome-italy
  • Liked: 1
  • Likes Given: 0
I looket at the video again, and I think something went wrong:
1) lander did not stop at as expected 4 m altitude (around 05:57:00 in video it starts "picking up some dust" (cit.) )
2) engine did not turn off at that altitude, it remained firing even after landing!
-- Jumpjack --

Offline Silmfeanor

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1254
  • Utrecht, The Netherlands
  • Liked: 403
  • Likes Given: 722
I looket at the video again, and I think something went wrong:
1) lander did not stop at as expected 4 m altitude (around 05:57:00 in video it starts "picking up some dust" (cit.) )
2) engine did not turn off at that altitude, it remained firing even after landing!

The correct assumption in this case is not to assume something went wrong, but that the information we received was wrong.

Online ugordan

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 8520
    • My mainly Cassini image gallery
  • Liked: 3543
  • Likes Given: 759
2) engine did not turn off at that altitude, it remained firing even after landing!

Look at Apollo landing videos to see how shutdown transients in an engine can release gas for long after it's been shut down.

Offline Garrett

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1134
  • France
  • Liked: 128
  • Likes Given: 113
1) lander did not stop at as expected 4 m altitude (around 05:57:00 in video it starts "picking up some dust" (cit.) )
remember, the video is made from individual images, and  we don't have their timestamps. any "stopping" may not have been added when the video was created.
- "Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist." - Indiana Jones

Offline savuporo

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5152
  • Liked: 1002
  • Likes Given: 342
Quote
BEIJING, Dec. 15 -- Chinese President Xi Jinping congratulated the complete success of Chang'e-3 mission that achieved the country's first moon softlanding Sunday night at Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC).

Xi and other officials shook hands with staff members at the control center, extending greetings to all participants of the mission.

After the moon lander and moon rover successfully took pictures for each other on Sunday night, Ma Xingrui, chief commander of China's lunar program, announced Chang'e-3 mission a "complete success".

For politicians, its "mission accomplished" with the first pictures and the flags - for the rest of us, it's just starting to get real exciting :)

I'm surprised there havent been a lot of other official congratulations to the team from elsewhere.
Orion - the first and only manned not-too-deep-space craft

Offline Star One

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 13996
  • UK
  • Liked: 3974
  • Likes Given: 220

Talking of Chang'e 4, will that be that launched on the same launcher as this one or are they going to put it one of their new launchers? Afterall to do sample recovery I would think they'll need a higher capacity launcher.
No, Chang'e-4 is going to be copy HW of CH'e-3 including LV, with mission goals more focussed on science compare to  Ch'e-3 which is more technology demonstration mission.
Sample return missions will be then Chang'e-4 and Chang'e-5.

I had heard that Change'e 4 was the backup to 3, therefore I thought it would be used to test out a new launcher?

Offline pospa

  • Full Member
  • **
  • Posts: 213
  • Pardubice, CZ
  • Liked: 291
  • Likes Given: 800

Talking of Chang'e 4, will that be that launched on the same launcher as this one or are they going to put it one of their new launchers? Afterall to do sample recovery I would think they'll need a higher capacity launcher.
No, Chang'e-4 is going to be copy HW of CH'e-3 including LV, with mission goals more focussed on science compare to  Ch'e-3 which is more technology demonstration mission.
Sample return missions will be then Chang'e-4 and Chang'e-5.
I had heard that Change'e 4 was the backup to 3, therefore I thought it would be used to test out a new launcher?
Ah, sorry for my mistake, sample return mission should be Chang'e-5 only. It is planed to launch it on CZ5-E in 2018.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Lunar_Exploration_Program
And yes, Ch'e-4 was the back up of Ch'e-3, and should fly in 2015.

Offline MP99

That's what I've read somewhere it is going to happen!  :) HD-3D live footage from the moon!

I suspect the Earth will be beyond the distance for any parallax/3D effects.  ;)

cheers, Martin

Offline puetzk

  • Member
  • Posts: 13
  • Iowa
    • puetzk.org
  • Liked: 18
  • Likes Given: 1
China's moon rover, lander to photograph each other


China's first moon rover, Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, and the lander are scheduled to take photos of each other Sunday night, a move that will mark the complete success of the country's Chang'e-3 lunar probe mission.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-12/15/c_132969906.htm

Not-so-obviously (javascript was a bit broken for me), that article actually has an associated gallery at http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/photo/2013-12/16/c_132970118_2.htm, with better-quality copies of several of the pictures others screen-captured from TV upthread:

Offline Lars_J

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 6160
  • California
  • Liked: 677
  • Likes Given: 195
That was an amazing descent video! :D

I'll join others in wishing that they would release images quicker in the original quality instead of bad photos of giant monitors.

Offline Comga

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 6466
  • Liked: 4572
  • Likes Given: 5136
That sure was an exciting video of the landing.   8)

It helped to view it on my phone, where I could put it on the table and rotate it so that the landing appeared to be going downward.  ::)

I agree that the dust flow just before and after contact could have been due to gas escaping after the engine was shut down.  In addition to errors in understanding the descent timeline being an explanation preferable to postulating an anomaly, there is always the certainty that we don't know all of the details.  This most likely unfolded exactly as planned and announced.  It may just have looked different than some of us anticipated. ;D

One thing I don't see is a color reference plaque to aid in color correction and white balance of the images, like we see on the Mars landers.  One red flag doesn't help much. ???

The sunward solar panel on Yutu is tilted down.  Have we read if this is an error in deployment or is it an an active controlled measure to maximize electric power generation or optimize the thermal environment for the rover?
What kind of wastrels would dump a perfectly good booster in the ocean after just one use?

Offline Prober

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10348
  • Save the spin....I'm keeping you honest!
  • Nevada
  • Liked: 721
  • Likes Given: 729
That footage is incredible.  I so wish we'd had something like that for MSL!  NASA needs to get it into their heads that the public need to actually see is happening in order to get them interested in what's going on!
Unfortunately, despite the great imagery from the Chang'e 3 mission, the public is very unaware of what's happening. Poor media coverage and bad timing (Mandela's funeral taking the headlines) are among the reasons. However, I suspect and fear that there is another reason: very few people care about space travel, Moon landings and so on.
the news came to our tv sets in the usa.
2017 - Everything Old is New Again.
"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant..." --Isoroku Yamamoto

Offline mlindner

  • Software Engineer
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2908
  • Space Capitalist
  • Silicon Valley, CA
  • Liked: 2204
  • Likes Given: 818
I normally have much more reaction to these things, but this whole thing has me rather underwhelmed. Maybe because I've always thought landing on the Moon would be easy with modern technology?
LEO is the ocean, not an island (let alone a continent). We create cruise liners to ride the oceans, not artificial islands in the middle of them. We need a physical place, which has physical resources, to make our future out there.

Offline Dalhousie

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2766
  • Liked: 780
  • Likes Given: 1131
I was beginning to wonder whether I would ever see a return to the lunar surface.  I am the opposite of underwhelmed.  When I watched the live broadcast I had tears in my eyes.
Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Offline mlindner

  • Software Engineer
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2908
  • Space Capitalist
  • Silicon Valley, CA
  • Liked: 2204
  • Likes Given: 818
That footage is incredible.  I so wish we'd had something like that for MSL!  NASA needs to get it into their heads that the public need to actually see is happening in order to get them interested in what's going on!
Unfortunately, despite the great imagery from the Chang'e 3 mission, the public is very unaware of what's happening. Poor media coverage and bad timing (Mandela's funeral taking the headlines) are among the reasons. However, I suspect and fear that there is another reason: very few people care about space travel, Moon landings and so on.

I wouldn't call what we're seeing "great" imagery honestly. It's great as compared to Apollo, because you're comparing modern technology to analog color wheel 10 fps footage. I'm still waiting for proper releases of the video footage not from poor TV screencaps after multiple bad digital re-encodes. This is a failure of the Chinese government IMO.
LEO is the ocean, not an island (let alone a continent). We create cruise liners to ride the oceans, not artificial islands in the middle of them. We need a physical place, which has physical resources, to make our future out there.

Offline mlindner

  • Software Engineer
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2908
  • Space Capitalist
  • Silicon Valley, CA
  • Liked: 2204
  • Likes Given: 818
I was beginning to wonder whether I would ever see a return to the lunar surface.  I am the opposite of underwhelmed.  When I watched the live broadcast I had tears in my eyes.

My dad saw the landings live, but I never did. I grew up hearing about it all the time. I'm rather surprised at the outpouring of emotion thats been going on in this topic considering its a rover, and its just the Moon. Rover on Mars, yes exciting. People ANYWHERE, definitely exciting. Awesome pictures of the Moon, yes exciting. Poor images of the moon, not so much.

We've been getting great imagery from LRO and Kaguya of late so this is all rather, well, dull. I had no emotional response to this at all.
LEO is the ocean, not an island (let alone a continent). We create cruise liners to ride the oceans, not artificial islands in the middle of them. We need a physical place, which has physical resources, to make our future out there.

Offline Hungry4info3

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 525
  • Liked: 163
  • Likes Given: 81
I'm still waiting for proper releases of the video footage not from poor TV screencaps after multiple bad digital re-encodes. This is a failure of the Chinese government IMO.


Tags:
 

Advertisement NovaTech
Advertisement Northrop Grumman
Advertisement
Advertisement Margaritaville Beach Resort South Padre Island
Advertisement Brady Kenniston
Advertisement NextSpaceflight
Advertisement Nathan Barker Photography
0