Chang'e-6 lunar mission

[Phil Stooke]

Seger Yu tweets a landing location reported on CCTV news: 154.4° W, 42.1° S.

https://x.com/SegerYu/status/1795057805495291916

[Galactic Penguin SST]

https://twitter.com/AJ_FI/status/1795753457435255156

Chang'e-6 lunar far side landing attempt set for approx 0000 UTC Sunday, June 2 (8:00 p.m. EDT  June 1, 0800 BJT June 2)

(source is from the Swedish Negative Ions on Lunar Surface instrument team at ESA)

[Galactic Penguin SST]

I was casually checking on other things and accidentally saw an update from an "insider" source (not gonna post the link here since I'm not sure if leaking this out is a problem; PM me if you want it) - it looks like the 2nd and 3rd lunar orbit insertion/circulation burns were performed on May 9th (~02:56 UTC, to 4 hours period elliptical orbit) and May 21st (~14:27 UTC, to 200 x 200 km x 43° LLO) respectively.

Neither of these were officially reported.

Same "insider source" now updated claiming that the lander will separate from the orbiter-return capsule TODAY, May 30. Landing is still on June 2 as reported above.

[Spiceman]

That first week of June will be pretty exciting ! 

[punder]

Here’s something… no idea if it’s legit.

Update: nope.

[punder]

And… no, the first one is NOT legit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oasCmHBUX8

[tolis]

There is a post by Thorsten Denk on unmannedspaceflight.com suggesting the landing already took place.

[DT1]

And also this news:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2024-06-02/China-s-Chang-e-6-probe-lands-on-far-side-of-moon-1u5XLCSm8nu/p.html

The Chang'e-6 probe touched down on the far side of the moon on Sunday, according to the China National Space Administration.

[tolis]

Another report with a landing time: 2223 UTC

https://spacenews.com/change-6-lands-on-far-side-of-the-moon-to-collect-unique-lunar-samples/

[DT1]

And also this news:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2024-06-02/China-s-Chang-e-6-probe-lands-on-far-side-of-moon-1u5XLCSm8nu/p.html

The Chang'e-6 probe touched down on the far side of the moon on Sunday, according to the China National Space Administration.

SpaceNews is also reporting the successful landing:
https://spacenews.com/change-6-lands-on-far-side-of-the-moon-to-collect-unique-lunar-samples/

The Chang’e-6 lander made a soft landing at 6:23 p.m. Eastern June 1 (2223 UTC), the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced shortly after the event.

[Blackstar]

I have this memory that when they did CE-3 they broadcast in real time. Is that true? Now they don't want to do anything live?

[Hungry4info3]

Yes. CE3 was broadcast live. It might be harder to do farside missions due to the comm differences. I'm not sure.

[spaceman3]

Amazing to see the difference between, say, the ISRO landing w/ Chandrayaan-3, which was widely discussed online (and on the front page of the NY Times the next day!) and this landing which isn't being discussed in the usual space-obsessed places such as the Facebook Space Hipster group or on X.

Or maybe I'm missing something.

If this landing is successful (still unknown), it's a pretty significant achievement, especially this year, when several other landers have failed to land successfully.

[Hungry4info3]

(still unknown)

We have confirmation from CNSA. Italian instrument has been deployed. French and ESA instruments "about to start working."
https://www.cnsa.gov.cn/n6758823/n6758844/n10518102/n10518147/c10541444/content.html

[Galactic Penguin SST]

Amazing to see the difference between, say, the ISRO landing w/ Chandrayaan-3, which was widely discussed online (and on the front page of the NY Times the next day!) and this landing which isn't being discussed in the usual space-obsessed places such as the Facebook Space Hipster group or on X.

Or maybe I'm missing something.

If this landing is successful (still unknown), it's a pretty significant achievement, especially this year, when several other landers have failed to land successfully.

You can't do anything when Chinese officials doesn't offer any concrete updates to the mission since initial lunar orbit injection in early May...

Anyway touchdown occurred at 22:23:15.861 UTC. As far as I can see, if the Chinese has received surface images, they haven't released them yet. Also the landing coordinates is not seen (though looking at the MCC screens I imagine it won't be far away from planned).

https://twitter.com/Cosmic_Penguin/status/1797079286970790147
https://twitter.com/Cosmic_Penguin/status/1797079289978048946

[Blackstar]

Amazing to see the difference between, say, the ISRO landing w/ Chandrayaan-3, which was widely discussed online (and on the front page of the NY Times the next day!) and this landing which isn't being discussed in the usual space-obsessed places such as the Facebook Space Hipster group or on X.

Or maybe I'm missing something.

If this landing is successful (still unknown), it's a pretty significant achievement, especially this year, when several other landers have failed to land successfully.

It's primarily the secrecy.

Also, doing something for the fourth time is a bit less interesting for the media.

[spaceman3]

It's primarily the secrecy.

Also, doing something for the fourth time is a bit less interesting for the media.

Oh yeah, no doubt it's the secrecy. I guess I'm a little confused as they had way more PR for previous landings but not this one. The previous sampling mission, if I recall, had tons of live updates.

I'll say there's one more issue: with India, English is embedded into national culture so it's much easier to translate across global media. This is not the case with China.

Either way, impressive stuff. Let's see if they manage to pull off the much harder part--the liftoff, rendezvous and docking, and return to Earth.

[Hungry4info3]

The super-secret broadcast that's shrouded in secrecy is about to start in ~2 minutes.
(seriously, can we knock it off with this cold war era mindset?)

[Galactic Penguin SST]

Special post-landing programme coverage at CCTV: https://weibo.com/l/wblive/p/show/1022:2321325040752848666745

[Blackstar]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3QU3vAx810