Author Topic: LIVE: Chang'e-3 lunar probe and rover Lunar Landing December 14, 2013  (Read 717737 times)

Offline the_other_Doug

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Robust little rover.

Well, the fact it's just sitting there doing nothing is probably helping its longevity  :P

Chang'e 3 and Yutu are now the longest-lived lunar spacecraft ever by a considerable margin, right?

Actually, the fact that the little jade rabbit can't position itself to the best attitude for solar heating/radiative cooling and can't close its thermal cover to protect the electronics boxes from the extreme cold of the lunar night means that just sitting there makes it even harder for it to survive this long.

But yes, not counting the ALSEP packages (which weren't spacecraft, but you could make the case that Yutu is a rover, not a spacecraft), the Chang'e 3/Yutu combo are the most long-lived equipment deployed on the Moon.  It makes me weep at how many new vistas it might have shared with us if Yutu had been able to rover freely all this time.
-Doug  (With my shield, not yet upon it)

Offline NovaSilisko

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Actually, the fact that the little jade rabbit can't position itself to the best attitude for solar heating/radiative cooling and can't close its thermal cover to protect the electronics boxes from the extreme cold of the lunar night means that just sitting there makes it even harder for it to survive this long.

Mm, good point. Whatever happened to Chang'e 4 and its rover anyway? Weren't they supposed to launch this year?

Offline Blackstar

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Actually, the fact that the little jade rabbit can't position itself to the best attitude for solar heating/radiative cooling and can't close its thermal cover to protect the electronics boxes from the extreme cold of the lunar night means that just sitting there makes it even harder for it to survive this long.

Mm, good point. Whatever happened to Chang'e 4 and its rover anyway? Weren't they supposed to launch this year?

You can find more on that up-thread as well as the China space program thread in the China section. China looks like it will fly CE-4, but will possibly land it on the far side of the Moon. They may also add some new instruments to it. Not totally clear if it will have a rover, but that seems likely. Launch date now seems to be after CE-5 in 2017.

They have indicated that they have hardware on hand, but it's unclear just how much hardware they have. So CE-4 might look significantly different than CE-3.
« Last Edit: 06/16/2015 08:49 pm by Blackstar »

Offline plutogno

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New high-accuracy spacecraft VLBI tracking using high data-rate signal: A demonstration with Chang'E-3
http://tech.scichina.com:8082/sciEe/EN/abstract/abstract518536.shtml
« Last Edit: 09/19/2015 07:31 am by plutogno »

Offline savuporo

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« Last Edit: 12/07/2015 03:39 am by savuporo »
Orion - the first and only manned not-too-deep-space craft

Offline Dalhousie

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Apologies in advance for any lack of civility - it's unintended

Online Satori

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Offline Moe Grills

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Yutu data reveals new type of lunar basalt

http://www.sci-news.com/space/chinese-rover-yutu-new-type-lunar-basalt-03532.html
Astonishing scientific results from a rover many had written off as a failure.

Offline eeergo

All of Chang'e 3's images have been made public. See http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2016/01221450-china-invites-public-on-board.html for details and the links to the website.

Apparently the image browser is a bit annoying to use (and it requires free registration) so there are already a few articles out there detailing the highlights, and Emily Lakdawalla has hosted many images in her Planetary Society's blog: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2016/01281656-fun-with-a-new-data-set-change.html

The orbital image is from Chang'e-2, showing the Tycho crater, but I just thought it was too nice to leave out :)
« Last Edit: 02/01/2016 10:36 pm by eeergo »
-DaviD-

Online Satori

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Offline savuporo

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All of Chang'e 3's images have been made public. See http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2016/01221450-china-invites-public-on-board.html for details and the links to the website.

Also the lpsc2016 paper that describes what data is released and how to access it

http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2016/pdf/1353.pdf
Orion - the first and only manned not-too-deep-space craft

Online Galactic Penguin SST

Well, the rabbit is apparently in eternal hibernation dead on its 31st lunar day. No-one mentioned this news except for its official Weibo account (the personalized one nonetheless)......  :-X

EDIT: Scratch that, it was mentioned on CCTV: http://tv.cctv.com/2016/07/31/VIDEJ3mHYDYOwFawtokytYKC160731.shtml
« Last Edit: 08/03/2016 04:04 pm by Galactic Penguin SST »
Astronomy & spaceflight geek penguin. In a relationship w/ Space Shuttle Discovery. Current Priority: Chasing the Chinese Spaceflight Wonder Egg & A Certain Chinese Mars Rover

Offline plutogno

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any indication of when exactly did thid happen?


« Last Edit: 08/03/2016 06:07 pm by plutogno »

Offline Svetoslav

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I also didn't understand if the stationary lander is still alive


Offline Star One

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Offline plutogno

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Offline savuporo

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Orion - the first and only manned not-too-deep-space craft

Offline eeergo

Chang'e-3's data is not only being used for planetary science, geology and UV astrophysics... but now also gravitational wave astrophysics!

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.05515.pdf
Chang’e 3 lunar mission and upper limit on stochastic background of gravitational wave around the 0.01 Hz band



Quote
The Doppler tracking data of the Chang’e 3 lunar mission is used to constrain the stochastic background of gravitational wave in cosmology within the 1 mHz to 0.05 Hz frequency band. Our result improves on the upper bound on the energy density of the stochastic background of gravitational wave in the 0.02 Hz to 0.05 Hz band obtained by the Apollo missions, with the improvement reaching almost one order of magnitude at around 0.05 Hz. Detailed noise analysis of the Doppler tracking data is also presented, with the prospect that these noise sources will be mitigated in future Chinese deep space missions. A feasibility study is also undertaken to understand the scientific capability of the Chang’e 4 mission, due to be launched in 2018, in relation to the stochastic gravitational wave background around 0.01 Hz.
-DaviD-

Offline DF2MZ

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These days I tried to receive Chang'e-3's x-band signals from the moon and was successful on January 8 and 9. The lander was transmitting around 01:00 UTC on 8496 Mhz. It was a pretty strong signal in my 1 m dish. Here is a spectrogram from January 9th. The carrier at the bottom until approx. 00:41 close to -10.000 Hz in the spectrogram. Afterwards some kind of data transmission was switched on. The signal at 0 Hz is an artifact of my receiving system.


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