NASASpaceFlight.com Forum
Robotic Spacecraft (Astronomy, Planetary, Earth, Solar/Heliophysics) => Space Science Coverage => Topic started by: Chris Bergin on 12/14/2013 04:09 am
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Second thread for landing coverage.
Previous thread (build up and launch):
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=26848.0
Launch article - by Rui C. Barbosa
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/12/china-change3-rover-to-the-moon/
Landing article - by Rui C. Barbosa
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/12/china-jade-rabbit-lunar-arrival/
CCTV Coverage set to begin at 11am UTC.
Landing scheduled for around 13:40 UTC
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On top of Rui's articles, he's written out a lot of specifics on the instrumentation.
That information is as follows:
he Chang’e-3 mission couples a lander and the rover, advancing China’s exploration ambitions exponentially. The lander is equipped with a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) to power the lunar operations during the three-month mission. The energy will be used to power the scientific payload of seven instruments and cameras. The Chang’e-3 lander carries four instruments: the MastCam, the Descent Camera, the Lunar-based Ultraviolet Telescope (LUT) and the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUV).
The MastCam was developed by the Institute of Optics and Electronics (IOE) from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Positioned on the top of the mast of the lander, the MastCam will be used for acquisition of landing area optical photographs, for surveying the terrain and geological features of the landing zone. The camera will also monitor the movement of rover on the lunar surface having a multi-color imaging ability. It can shoot both photographs and videos, tweak the focusing automatically and has the ability to minimize scattered lights and image compression. Its major systems are a optical system and a mechanical system.
The Descent Camera was developed by the Beijing Institute of Space Machinery and Electricity (BISME) of the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST). Positioned on the bottom of the lander the Descent Camera will make the acquisition of landing area optical photographs for surveying the terrain and geological features of the landing zone at altitudes between 2 km and 4 km. It has a highly miniaturized design; light weight, small volume, low energy consumption and high performance. It can withstand high levels of radiation, temperature difference and violent vibrations at launch. The camera uses a CMOS sensor and also a high-speed static grey-scale image compression. It has an automatic focusing. Its main systems are an optical system and an imagery receiving and processing electric box.
The National Astronomy Observatory of China (NAOC) from CAS, developed the Lunar-based Ultraviolet Telescope (LUT). The LUT will make use of the absence of atmosphere and slow rotation of the Moon to observe selected variable celestial objects and sky areas in the near ultraviolet region. The telescope is positioned on the -Y side of the lander. Its major sub-systems are the telescope body and frame; the reflector lens and telescope mount, and the electric cable mount and control systems. This will be the first ever astronomical observation made from surface of other planetary objects for prolonged periods. The LUT is highly automated and can aim and point to various targets with the telescope mount automatically. Its light weight was achieved via using composite materials and structure optimization, and is highly adaptable to the lunar surface environment. It can operate between -20 and 40 degrees Celsius.
The Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics (CIOMP) from CAS developed the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUV). Located on the top side of the lander, the EUV will provide imagery of the Earth's ionosphere in the extreme ultraviolet region and will make investigations into space weather forecasting and ionosphere studies. It can track Earth automatically, performing long term imagery monitoring of scattered extreme ultraviolet radiation from the Earth's ionosphere. The operational wavelength is 30.4 nm (about 1/20 of visible light) and the field of view (FOV) is 15 degrees (region covers about 7.5 Earths). The EUV can operate between -25 and 75 degrees Celsius and has ability to survive and operate in the highly variable thermal environment of the lunar surface. This is the first extreme ultraviolet camera operating from the lunar surface. Its main sub-systems ate the extreme ultraviolet multi-membrane optical imagery system, the extreme ultraviolet photon counter sensor; a signal processing unit; the pointing control system and the main control unit.
The Yuti rover carries four instruments: the PanCam, developed by the Xian Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics (OPT) from CAS; the Ground Penetration Radar (GPM) developed by the Institute of Electronics (CAS); the VIS/NIR Imaging Spectrometer (VNIS) developed by the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics (SITP) (CAS); and the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS), developed by the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) also from CAS.
Located on the top mast of Yutu, the PanCam will acquire 3-D imagery of the lunar surface for surveying the terrain, geological features and structures, and craters inside the target region. It will also monitor the operational state of the lander.
PanCam uses simplified optical system and highly miniaturized design, making the cameras light-weight, small volume, low energy consuming and highly reliable. It can operate between -25 and 55 degrees Celsius and is able to survive between -40 and 75 degrees Celsius. The focusing of its optical system is operational between 3m and infinity and it has both automatic and manual focusing, being able to automatically adjust the field brightness. Its main sub-systems are twin PanCams (A & B), each with one optical system, mechanical system, electronics and thermal control parts.
Lying inside the rover, the Ground Penetration Radar will measure lunar soil depth and structural distribution of soil, magma, lava tubes and sub-surface rock layers. The GPM features two channels: Channel I operates at 60MHz - for probing sub-surface geological features down to meter-level resolution with a maximum depth >100 m; Channel II operates at 500MHz - for probing lunar soil depth with resolution better than 30 cm with maximum depth >30 m. The antennas can survive temperatures of -200 to 120 degrees Celsius. GPM has a miniaturized design, low energy consumption, high performance. Its major sub-systems are composed by a radar controller, channel I/II antennas and transmitter, electric cables.
The VIS/NIR Imaging Spectrometer will measure the composition and resources of the lunar surface via imaging and spectrometry in the visible and near-infrared wavelengths. Located beneath the rover's top deck, it uses a RF-driven tunable light & ultrasound spectrometry, using new design ultrasound generators. This spectrometer has an anti-dust accumulation and in-orbit calibration functions. It has a miniaturized design, light weight and high performance. The major sub-systems are the tunable light and ultrasound spectrometer optical system, ultrasound-driven target guiding, dust repelling and thermal control components, composite outer case, main control system and data processing module.
The Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer will measure the composition and distribution of various elements on the lunar surface via observing the scattered X-rays from the bombardment of alpha particles of rocks. Located on the rover’s robotic arm, is capable of active particle scattering, in-situ determination of lunar surface element, in-orbit calibration and distance measurement functions. The sensor can re-calibrate itself through the use of standard calibration targets and the rover's lunar night survival contains a radioisotope heater unit (RHU) for keeping the sensor warm. It has low energy consumption, light weight, high resolution and high sensitivity semi-conductor sensor are used.
The payload control systems on both the Chang’e-3 lander and Yutu rover are both built by the Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization of CAS.
Yutu is equipped with a solar panel to power the vehicle during the lunar day on a three month mission. During this time, Yutu will explore a three square kilometer area, travelling a maximum distance of 10 km from the landing point.
The rover will be capable of real time video transmission, while it will be able to dig and perform simple analysis of soil samples. For the real time video transmissions Yutu will use the PanCam. These cameras will provide stereo images in high-resolution and will eventually give three-dimensional imaging for the scientists on Earth.
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Best of luck to China! I for one will be glued to the monitor as I've never been able to experience a lunar landing in real time :)
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Well, I was alive for the US Surveyor and Apollo missions but, I say keep it coming...more, more, more. Best of luck to China.
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CCTVNEWS @cctvnews 2h
Video: China prepares for #ChangE3 lunar probe's moon landing.http://youtu.be/b0By2XhM5fw
True story : Only Lockheed Martin Space Systems have built spacecraft that have successfully landed on other planets this century. Thales Alenia built one last century but it landed in 2005
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True story : Only Lockheed Martin Space Systems have built spacecraft that have successfully landed on other planets this century. Thales Alenia built one last century but it landed in 2005
This would come as a surprise to Hughes/Boeing,who built Surveyor, and Lavochkin who built three families of lunar landers, lunar rovers, and two families of Venus landers.
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True story : Only Lockheed Martin Space Systems have built spacecraft that have successfully landed on other planets this century. Thales Alenia built one last century but it landed in 2005
This would come as a surprise to Hughes/Boeing,who built Surveyor, and Lavochkin who built three families of lunar landers, lunar rovers, and two families of Venus landers.
Important part of the quote now in bold.
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lcs wrote in the other update thread
"Surveyor 1 succeeded on its first attempt. What were the three failed attempts?"
Rangers 3, 4 and 5.
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True story : Only Lockheed Martin Space Systems have built spacecraft that have successfully landed on other planets this century. Thales Alenia built one last century but it landed in 2005
This would come as a surprise to Hughes/Boeing,who built Surveyor, and Lavochkin who built three families of lunar landers, lunar rovers, and two families of Venus landers.
Important part of the quote now in bold.
"this century" is quite arbitary and nearly meaningless, it's less than a quarter of the space age.
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On the original thread - to which I cannot now post - I had said that there were three US failures to survive a lunar landing before Surveyor 1 and this was queried. Remember that the original Rangers were intended to rough-land capsules on the Moon which would then return data: Rangers 3-5 from memory. They all failed to make a survivable landing and then the Ranger programme was redirected to the crash-land with photographs of the descent being returned - Rangers 6-9.
Since Rangers 3-5 should have made survivable landings - and were thus akin to Luna 9 et al - these are the three failures that I referred to.
Edit: Rangers 3-5 were designated the Block 2 series with Rangers 6-9 the Block 3 series. For an online review please check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_program.
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... They all failed to make a survivable landing and then the Ranger programme was redirected to the crash-land with photographs of the descent being returned - Rangers 6-9...
I've recently browsed through a lot of recent chinese origin spacecraft and space robotics engineering related papers, the ones with open access. A lot of them, especially the ones related to Chang'e reference US, european, russian and japanese previous works a lot. Chinese are not starting from scratch as the US and USSR did in their time, they have a lot of knowledge to draw upon.
Granted, papers will never convey the fine engineering details, and the devil is always in the details, but they are off to a much better start - evidenced by near flawless performance of Chang'e-1 and beyond expectations accomplishments of Chang'e-2.
And before anyone jumps in with "they copied us",
http://www.ecns.cn/voices/2013/12-13/92538.shtml
To change the "made in China" label to "created in China", the country needs to develop new industries and establish a new innovation mechanism, and of course allocate more funds for R&D.
Chang'e probes very definitely bear the mark of "created in China" on them.
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CCTV live english channel just ran a short preview segment with some animations and confirmed that they will have live coverage. "Stay tuned"
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The rover will be capable of real time video transmission, while it will be able to dig and perform simple analysis of soil samples. For the real time video transmissions Yutu will use the PanCam. These cameras will provide stereo images in high-resolution and will eventually give three-dimensional imaging for the scientists on Earth.
Oh my God, realtime 3d transmission from another celestial body!!
I do not have a 3d TV set, how can I record the CCTV stream to view it later?
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Is this the correct URL? http://english.cntv.cn/live/p2p/index.shtml
Schedule isn't showing any Chang'e 3 coverage.
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Looks like there will be a live coverage here as well:
http://live.china.org.cn/2013/12/13/coming-soon-change-3-lands-on-the-moon/
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What is the link for the "CCTV Coverage set to begin at 11am UTC" ??
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According to my watch its 11:06 UTC, but CCTV-9 hasn't started coverage yet.
http://www.cctv-9.com/2013/default.asp?VideoName=live
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ESA @esa
ESA ops supporting #ChangE3 landing - New Norcia station starts tracking descent at 12:26GMT http://bit.ly/1bOcW2t pic.twitter.com/cpNyPPkI2C
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According to my watch its 11:06 UTC, but CCTV-9 hasn't started coverage yet.
http://www.cctv-9.com/2013/default.asp?VideoName=live
Seems to be my fault - it probably won't start till an hour later.
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Coverage is from 12 to 14 hours UTC.
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CCTV-10 (http://tv.cntv.cn/live/cctv10/) seems to be starting up their coverage.
Edit: And now the English channel (http://english.cntv.cn/live/p2p/index.shtml)
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Ok folks, into coverage. Let's ensure all posts add value to the thread, with coverage. Screenshots from anyone are welcome.
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Here we go....
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CCTV-9 coverage has started.
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Clock in the background is countdown from 58 mins to landing.
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Countdown clock. 57 minutes to go.
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Some MCC views.
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57 minutes to what, though. Landing is about 90 minutes away. May acquisition of signal as the spacecraft comes over the lunar limb?
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Countdown clock. 57 minutes to go.
Maybe this is the time for retro-braking or they have anticipated again the lunar landing time.
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57 minutes to what, though. Landing is about 90 minutes away. May acquisition of signal as the spacecraft comes over the lunar limb?
I gather it's 57 minutes till the beginning of landing operations?
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Rover deploy animation.
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720 s (12 minutes) to land.
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Try this for an English language broadcast
http://english.cntv.cn/live/p2p/index.shtml
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They referenced that clock as the landing time earlier.
Schedule says 90 mins away. We'll see.
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"The father of the Chang'e program."
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Lunar advisor.
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Apparently President Carter gave the Chinese one gram of lunar soil brought back on Apollo 16. The Chinese used half of that to get all the data they needed on the materials!
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Talking about Lunar bases.
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This is all about technologies for crewed lunar landings and lunar bases.
(So are the Russians. Not NASA.....)
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Robotic landing. Crew Landing. ISRU. Lunar Base.
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On Sinus Iridum!
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Rainbow Bay on the Moon....
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CCTV-10 has a cool set.
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Now I think that countdown is for this engine firing.
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Braking stage.
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Hovering stage.
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Just above Moon.
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Soft landing stage.
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Btw, for anyone away from a computer
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.fungo.fungolive (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.fungo.fungolive) - Good streaming (Yes, the menu's all in Chinese, but you can navigate your way through to select the channels nonetheless). Stops to buffer every minute or so though.
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Blue are NASA landing sites. Red are the Russians.
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"I took this photo of the landing site from a telescope at my home".
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Stopping 4 m above surface to avoid dust.
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Stopping 4 m above surface to avoid dust.
What's Chinese for "picking up some dust"?
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Original plan was to start from 200 km orbit.
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Discussing landing sequence and soft landing.
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Human intervention can happen any time during landing.
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From http://live.china.org.cn/2013/12/13/coming-soon-change-3-lands-on-the-moon/:
[20:29] After Chang’e 3′s successful landing, BACC will discuss whether the rover and the lander will separate immediately. Even so, the Yutu (Jade Rabbit) rover will take a few hours to move out of the lander and appear on moon surface at 6:00 am on Sunday.
[20:28] Currently, staff at BACC are making final preparations to confirm Chang’e 3′s all parameters, including its flight speed, actual time and location of the lunar impact.
[20:26] Zhou Jianliang, deputy chief engineer of Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC), said on Saturday morning that Chang’e 3 is scheduled to ignite the rockets at 9:00 pm to start the soft-landing process. He added the process will take 12 minutes.
[20:23] The entire process of soft-landing will last 12 minutes and it will be performed by the probe itself, with “practically zero” chance of manual intervention being required. The Chang’e 3 mission has so far proceeded as planned.
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Lunar Lab.
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Yutu in lab.
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"Jade Rabbit"
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So we're about 20 mins from that first key event.
One hour to landing per the timeline.
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Yutu tested in Kumtag desert.
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They have a gamma-ray altimeter, technology derived from Shenzhou..
Human intervention can happen any time during landing.
You sure? Earlier coverage had christened the descent as 12 minutes of terror, without Beijing having any control. I only heard the guys saying that the "smartness" of the rover was actually the smartness of the people designing the rover, and the descent algorithms for the control software
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Aerospace Control Command Centre.
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Using microwave [radar], and laser [ranging? lidar?]to help with landing. Landing system derived from Shenzou but with enhanced reliability for lunar radiation environment.
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You sure?
That's what I heard.
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11 minutes to go on the countdown to the first event.
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Control room. Sorry for the low resolution. The other feeds don't work for me.
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Looks like live animation.
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Approaching Sinus Iridum.
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Position of Chang'e 3 w.r.t. the landing site
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Track seems to be missing Sinus Iridum.
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Position of Chang'e 3 w.r.t. the landing site
wow! from that map it looks like CE3 is heading to the western edge of the landing site, and into Mare Imbrium, close to crater Le Verrier instead of Sinus Iridum
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View from the control center
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Descending will occur in about 15 minutes.
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Waiting for the engine firing.
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CCTV - Discussing why landing time chosen.
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Countdown to ?
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Talking about sensing and diverts.
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Here we go with the engine firing coming up!
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Planned trajectory
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T-1 min.
Chosen the landing time to place the lander at local dawn (for a long period of solar energy), and with that, to ensure firing happens when the lunar temperatures are low.
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Landing height v time?
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60 seconds.
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Position of Chang'e 3 w.r.t. the landing site
wow! from that map it looks like CE3 is heading to the western edge of the landing site, and into Mare Imbrium, close to crater Le Verrier instead of Sinus Iridum
Appears landing box is large enough to land on subsequent orbits if needed? Aiming at that edge would correspond to earliest landing window.
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CCTV - Main engine firing
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Fired! Decelerating!
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PDI!
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Decelerating
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IGNITION - Chang'e-3 has ignited its powerful main engine, starting the descent. Primary Deceleration phase from 15 to 2.4 Kilometers.
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Decelerating.
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...
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Looks on track so far!
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Position of Chang'e 3 w.r.t. the landing site
wow! from that map it looks like CE3 is heading to the western edge of the landing site, and into Mare Imbrium, close to crater Le Verrier instead of Sinus Iridum
Appears landing box is large enough to land on subsequent orbits if needed? Aiming at that edge would correspond to earliest landing window.
Does it have enough fuel to have an ATO mode?
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Coming in. Lots of thruster firings.
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From http://live.china.org.cn/2013/12/13/coming-soon-change-3-lands-on-the-moon/:
[21:08] The lander will now descend 600 m within 20 seconds.
[21:07] The Chang’e 3 has started its 720-second power reduction.
[21:06] The downward-looking camera has started filming.
[21:04] The 7500 Newton rocket engine has been switched on.
[21:02] The rocket is working on a reduced power.
[21:00] The power descend begins.
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Here they come!
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Going in.
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Don't know about ATO but doubt it. More likely would be in case descent initiation was delayed. Since I don't know, I will not speculate on update thread.
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From the animation I have the feeling that landing will be a lot sooner than planned...
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Right, now they're saying that the descent imagery is not going to be used for landing site selection, and it's only for later data-corroboration etc.
Coming up now into terminal descent.
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Wow!
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CCTV - Discussion of beginning steep landing profile. Showing picture from two kilometers up.
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Wow indeed
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Live image!
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Landing site decided!
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...
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landing frame
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CCTV - 30 meterslive feed
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100 meters to go.
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Less than 100m
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Heading to 30 meters.
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Landed.
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Chang'e 3 on the surface!
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TOUCHDOWN!!!
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On Moon!
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Wooohoooo! GO CHINA!
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LANDING! 30 mins ahead of schedule it seems!
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landed
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Landing seems to have succeded :D
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Shaking hands and clapping hands among technicians and scientists.
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Position of landing site
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Great landing. Awesome pictures. Congrats to the various teams. Well earned!
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Congratulations to China! I am breathing again - I look like a Smurf. ;-)
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Congratulations in mission control.
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happy to be proven wrong! there were live pictures of the descent!
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Looks like they landed on Mare Imbrium to me.
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Solar array deploy coming up first, then launch lock releases.
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CCTV - System checks going on for 20 nhours.
5 min after landing.
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Congratulations to the Chinese team on the first successful Lunar landing in 37 years!
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Congratulations to China. Well done.
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We have to wait till later today for moon pictures?
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Solar panels unfolding.
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Solar panels unfolding
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Solar panel now unfolding.
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View of soil under lander.
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CCTV - Solar panel is unfolding. Simulation is being shown.
Comment by newscaster - No dust observed during landing.
9 minutes post landing
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...
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Panels deployed.
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And that's a successful deploy!
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Lander depends on solar power, and RTG is only for heat.
I didn't know that the lander had folded its panels again after having deployed it post launch, but apparently they did that to safe them against the impact of landing. Now unfolded again, and power positive!
Does anyone know LRO's current orbit? How long before we get imagery of Chang'E 3 on the moon?
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Was Chang'e-3 landing at 13:11:18.695 UTC?
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And panels deployed :).
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CCTV - Discussing systems checks
11 minutes post landing.
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I think the earliest photo opportunity for LRO is on Dec. 25.
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Hi-rate telemetry system deployed.
Clever to orient the craft so solar panels can track sun in one axis.
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Next critical step is rover deployment.
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CCTV - Discussing landing process.
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Any landing recording/recap available anywhere yet? I had my alarm set to 8:15, expecting a landing at 8:40 :(
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Any landing recording/recap available anywhere yet? I had my alarm set to 8:15, expecting a landing at 8:40 :(
It was transmitting pictures live.. I assume the software dumped intermediate frames (if the TT indicated it was still transmitting the previous frame), and is no longer transmitting the images taken. But if not, we haven't had a video of the descent imagery yet - so I'd say - watch the live stream..
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Showing rover deployment mechanism.
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CCTV - Discussing Rover activity and control. Stereo imaging, laser range finding, three month lifespan.
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Was Chang'e-3 landing at 13:11:18.695 UTC?
Yes, it was Andrey.
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Congrats to China on a successful Moon Landing!
Finally got to see one live! Now looking forward to photos and video, probably tmw.
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Any landing recording/recap available anywhere yet? I had my alarm set to 8:15, expecting a landing at 8:40 :(
It was transmitting pictures live.. I assume the software dumped intermediate frames (if the TT indicated it was still transmitting the previous frame), and is no longer transmitting the images taken. But if not, we haven't had a video of the descent imagery yet - so I'd say - watch the live stream..
Okay, I didn't realize it didn't transmit proper video of the landing. That makes me feel a bit better then, hopefully the video comes soon.
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now control center prepare to take first picture from moon.
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Today Chang'e 3 landed on the Moon on the one year anniversary of Chang'e 2 flying by the asteroid (4179) Toutatis.
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Amazing that they were able to get on the surface 30 minutes faster than expected.
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CCTV - Hoping for more than 3 month lifespan for the rover. Noting temperature range on the Moon.
Nuclear battery.
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Talking about surviving Lunar night.
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Was Chang'e-3 landing at 13:11:18.695 UTC?
Yes, it was Andrey.
Thanks, Rui! And 12:59:52.128? Beginning of descent?
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Preparing for Rover deployment.
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CCTV - discussing extending lander's direction antenna.
Discussing what needs to be done for preparation of rover for separation from Lander.
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Deploying ramps.
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Rover deployment sequence
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Rover deployed (not real time). Still waiting for actual deployment.
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Another view of surface from lander.
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View of leg.
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Deploying ramps.
As in discussing.. not actually deploying now..?
Played an animation of the rover deployment. Starts with unlocking of the wheels with some pyros, then solar array wing deployment on the rover, deplyoment of the mast, then the tracks. Rover drives out onto the tracks, and then the tracks are lowered to the surface (two stages...)
Interestingly, the reporter said that it could drive off the tracks, but that it'll be lowered as much as possible - for safety.
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I didn't understand ANYthing!
Wasn't it going to land RIGHT NOW at 13:40 UTC???
Why did it already land?!? DID it??? Did it transimt live video? Is a recording available to be viewed again'
What is going to happen now? When is the rover going to be deployed? Will it be a live video?
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Mentioned that rover will not talk directly to earth until it is out of communication shadow of the lander.
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CCTV - Says 27 minutes post landing.
Discussing technical aspects of Landing and applicability to landing robots on other bodies, including Mars.
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Wasn't it going to land RIGHT NOW at 13:40 UTC???
Why did it already land?!? DID it??? Did it transimt live video? Is a recording available to be viewed again'
What is going to happen now? When is the rover going to be deployed? Will it be a live video?
yes, it landed. Speculation is that it might land an orbit later. It didn't transmit live video; it did transmit live frames and telemetry. A recording will be sent to the earth later, hopefully.
The rover will perform system checks for quite a few hours now. After that, the rover will be deployed.
Calm down.
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Mentioned that rover will not talk directly to earth until it is out of communication shadow of the lander.
Yeah, I wonder why they didn't orient the lander such that the deployment was towards the Earth?
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http://russian.news.cn/science/2013-12/14/c_132968225.htm
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Are we expecting any more major events before CCTV coverage ends in 15 mins?
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The communications system between lander and rover?
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Wasn't it going to land RIGHT NOW at 13:40 UTC???
Why did it already land?!? DID it??? Did it transimt live video? Is a recording available to be viewed again'
What is going to happen now? When is the rover going to be deployed? Will it be a live video?
yes, it landed.
Damn!
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Mentioned that rover will not talk directly to earth until it is out of communication shadow of the lander.
Yeah, I wonder why they didn't orient the lander such that the deployment was towards the Earth?
Seems to be oriented to maximize solar panels for the long term.
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Received 59 photos during landing.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnM-sJ-KbNg
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Working sequence after landed
my rough translate...
solar array deploy
Gyro shut down
Accelerometer shut down
lander charging for rover
Directional antenna unlock
Rover's wheel unlock
ramp unlock (second times)
Propellant passivation
Directional antenna start to transmit data
Surveillance camera test taking photo
so we may expect can see some photo from lunar surface
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CCTV - Discussing:
Lunar rover's radar's two frequencies for shallow and deeper viewing into the Moon's surface.
Heating via radioactive units.
Already have 59 pictures from landing sent back. Geologist discussing flat landing area.
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59 pictures acquired....
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Six sites had been chosen.
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Landing site seems to be undisturbed by recent impacts, no boulders in the near vicinity.
Lander - Rover separation expected tomorrow, if I understood that correctly.
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Yay, Atlantis getting a mention on CCTV. Sadly it's about NASA losing capability.
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Talking about US space program.
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Are we expecting any more major events before CCTV coverage ends in 15 mins?
They said 59 pictures came down from the descent imager. May have a movie slideshow..
Also, apparently the lander is going to do a prop dump before the rover's deployed..
Seems to be oriented to maximize solar panels for the long term.
Yeah, but that would've remained unaffected if you flipped it 180 degrees...
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"US clear leader is private space exploration."
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CCTV - Showing Shuttle Atlantis. Apollo 11 landing video.
Discussing US Space Program and funding issues. "US clear leader in private space exploration."
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This is reasonably objective stuff from CCTV on NASA. Notes the less than one half of one cent (per tax dollar) cost to Americans.
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"Hope its golden years not in rear view mirror."
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"Hope its golden years not in rear view mirror."
Yep! I heard that one too!
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They seem to have conveniently overlooked Shuttle, Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiousity, ISS, and the other various NASA missions to Titan, Jupiter, Saturn etc.
Nasa hasn't exactly been idle.
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Landing site is at 19.51 deg. West, 44.12 deg. North.
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Emily Lakdawalla @elakdawalla 6m
Expect rover and lander separation tomorrow. Lander must vent excess fuel first. #Change3
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CCTV- British expert and commentator note improvements in instruments since last Lunar surface mission since 37 years ago.
"Opens a new page for celestial body exploration."
Noting importance of surface operations versus orbital missions.
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They seem to have conveniently overlooked Shuttle, Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiousity, ISS, and the other various NASA missions to Titan, Jupiter, Saturn etc.
They mentioned NASA was scoring achievements in other areas, mentioning Curiosity by name.
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CCTV - Has ended special broadcast.
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Coverage ending.
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Was Chang'e-3 landing at 13:11:18.695 UTC?
Yes, it was Andrey.
Thanks, Rui! And 12:59:52.128? Beginning of descent?
Didn't catch that one, but I assume it is the start of the engine for descent.
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Was Chang'e-3 landing at 13:11:18.695 UTC?
Yes, it was Andrey.
Thanks, Rui! And 12:59:52.128? Beginning of descent?
Didn't catch that one, but I assume it is the start of the engine for descent.
Yes, thanks, I think so too.
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Ok, so CCTV coverage concluding.
Thanks to all who helped with coverage. Special hat tip to Steven for his excellent coverage.
Rui's article, post landing:
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/12/china-jade-rabbit-lunar-arrival/
This thread continues with mission updates.
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Emily Lakdawalla @elakdawalla 18m
CCTV reporter: expected to receive 10 pictures during landing, actually got 59.
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They seem to have conveniently overlooked Shuttle, Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiousity, ISS, and the other various NASA missions to Titan, Jupiter, Saturn etc.
Nasa hasn't exactly been idle.
Nope.
CCTV - Shuttle noted with video clip. Curiosity landing method discussed. Apollo clip shown.
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The only quibble that I have with the Chinese animations is why were meteors streaking in the sky? There's no atmosphere to cause them to burn up!!!
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Landing images sequence:
(http://s24.postimg.org/uks9rlqf7/Chang_e3_landing.gif)
http://postimg.org/image/l08n4q135/
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CCTV- British expert and commentator
John Zarnecki, notably responsible for the Surface Science Package on the Huygens probe to Titan.
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Congratulations to China. Welcome to the club.
Excellent coverage here as always. Very easy to catch up and relive the events.
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Actually the Chinese language channels of CCTV is still covering the mission (I can't post links to you though, I'm watching it on my telly). CCTV 4 is talking about the tracking stations on earth, noting the ESA contribution, as well as domestic and ship-based stations.
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Note:
CCTV News now showing interview with Ouyang Ziyuan.
Ouyang Ziyuan Wikipedia
At: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouyang_Ziyuan
"Ouyang Ziyuan (simplified Chinese: 欧阳自远; traditional Chinese: 歐陽自遠; pinyin: Ōuyáng Zěyuǎn, born 1935) is a Chinese cosmochemist, geochemist and space advocate. :
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Would it be usefult to put link to my summary-page in first post ?
http://jumpjack.wordpress.com/2013/12/11/back-to-the-moon-chinese-mission-change3-with-yutu-rover-december-2013/
Apart from this, now that we lost official TV coverage, how can we continue following operations?
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https://twitter.com/esaoperations
Just after 13:16 UTC, ESA's Estrack station network detected #ChangE3 touch down in Moon. Congratulations to our Chinese colleagues!
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https://twitter.com/esaoperations
Highly precise 'delta-DOR' location tracking of China's Moon lander starts at 16:00 UTC. ESA tracking station support working as planned
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Any detail on scheduled time for rover deployment? I suppose it should be arounf 21:11 UTC...
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Firstly, congratulations to the Chinese space teams behind Chnage'3 mission on this, their first and successful soft lunar landing.
Like several oteres - if MCC animation are correct,it would seem Change 3 lander has touched down in Mare Imbrium. This is probably because of the earlier landing time and lunar revolution that they selected.
The two images are of a MCC map and a lunar map (for 14th Dec 13)
Looking toward Jade Rabbit deployment in a few hours . I'll be watching CCTV again - as well as NSF - around 17:00 GMT (it will be early Sunday morning Beijing time).
Phill
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Well done! 8) Wishing continued success with surface ops. :)
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Surveillance camera test taking photo
so we may expect can see some photo from lunar surface
any sign of it on Chinese CCTV?
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@elakdawalla
https://twitter.com/elakdawalla/status/411860136336949249 (https://twitter.com/elakdawalla/status/411860136336949249)
Tune in for Chang'e 3 rover deploy at 21:00 UT / 13:00 PT RT @GuangLin_Galaxy: @elakdawalla Bingo! 21:00 GMT, CCTV!
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Some happy engineers in ESOC’s Estrack control centre
The ESA and CNSA teams at ESOC celebrating today as Chang'E-3 lands on the lunar surface. Signal recording via ESA's New Norcia and Cebreros deep-space tracking stations will continue until 19:45 UTC, to obtain data that will help pinpoint the lander's position on the Moon. Well done, team!
http://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2013/12/14/some-happy-engineers-in-esocs-estrack-control-centre/
Image credit: ESA/E. Soerensen
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Surveillance camera test taking photo
so we may expect can see some photo from lunar surface
any sign of it on Chinese CCTV?
Here we go. color image from moon. take by surveillance camera of Chang'e 3
picture from Xinhua press
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Here we go. color image from moon. take by surveillance camera of Chang'e 3
Wow that fast. We are back on the moon
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Congratulations to China for this mission. They are fast catching up with excellent reliability record (for first deep space missions).
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Congratulations on this after so long away from the Lunar surface.
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Here we go. color image from moon. take by surveillance camera of Chang'e 3
picture from Xinhua press
This..this.. is brilliant.
Specifically because that 'discoloured' bit in the centre reminds me of this.
[youtube]ngTcUe1K7BI[/youtube]#t=1m50s
:D
EDIT: Yeah, yeah, I know it's probably just an optical artifact, but still...
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:)
;)
(http://jumpjack.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/all.gif?w=720)
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Here we go. color image from moon. take by surveillance camera of Chang'e 3
picture from Xinhua press
nice, I guess the rocky crater is the one at bottom left in this descent image
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And CCTV replay here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sS9GqnDYAU
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nice, I guess the rocky crater is the one at bottom left in this descent image
Unlikely, that image seems to be taken from way up. If you look at the animated gif posted earlier, the lander converged to a location that has a smaller crater with some rocks immediately to the upper right of where the extrapolated landing site is.
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Longer replay with better audio here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfNb0jeTi2s
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That was my first live lunar landing. I know we had the amazing MSL landing, but when those downward facing shots were coming in, I was reminded about my Dad telling me how he watched the Apollo 11 landing live. Not the same deal, but nearest synergy! The Moon hasn't lost its charm.
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I just want to thank this community for doing such a great job keeping on top of rapidly developing events in space exploration. This is a huge help!!
Here's a graphic of the landing location, from http://weibo.com/newsxh
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That was my first live lunar landing. I know we had the amazing MSL landing, but when those downward facing shots were coming in, I was reminded about my Dad telling me how he watched the Apollo 11 landing live. Not the same deal, but nearest synergy! The Moon hasn't lost its charm.
I followed all of the Apollo landings "live", twice on radio and the others on TV, and I got the same "buzz" with all of them - and the same for Chang'e 3.
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I just want to thank this community for doing such a great job keeping on top of rapidly developing events in space exploration. This is a huge help!!
On behalf of everyone contributing - as it's a big team effort - it's our pleasure, Emily! :)
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Are these genuine descent images?!?
http://bbs.9ifly.cn/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=11199&pid=279447&fromuid=27122
They look more like LRO images croppings which simulate lander views.
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I followed all of the Apollo landings "live", twice on radio and the others on TV, and I got the same "buzz" with all of them - and the same for Chang'e 3.
I wasn't even born at the time of Apollo 11 landing, but watching its recording is always a great emotion! :-)
I think I watched it some dozens of time, but each time i feel adrenaline ipon arriving at 1201 alarm! :-)
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Many of you will get a chuckle out of the BBC excited coverage
https://soundcloud.com/bbc-world-service/newshour-live-commentary-of
LASER BEAMS and pillars of fire
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Many of you will get a chuckle out of the BBC excited coverage
https://soundcloud.com/bbc-world-service/newshour-live-commentary-of
Thanks for this, probably the closest that those of us who didn't witness Apollo live come to getting a sense of how it felt back then. Listening to audio only.
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Congrats to China.
Mars is the prize.
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Go China!! zhongguo jiayou!!
Looking forward to rover deployment :P
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Go China!! zhongguo jiayou!!
Looking forward to rover deployment :P
Yep! Me too! It has been a great day!
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https://twitter.com/esaoperations
Wanna know the latest from China's #ChangE3 #Moon landing? Check the special site of @XHNews: http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/special/change3 … or watch #CCTV
---
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/special/change3/
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Congrats to all of the teams--keep up the good work!
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Congrats China! First Lunar landing I've ever witnessed - but hopefully the first of many. :)
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I would wait for proper calibrated science camera images before making any conclusion as to the color of the soil
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This belongs to updates too, #ChangE has totally peaked the twitter trends for last few hours. A lot of "how come i didnt know about this?" comments : )
Didnt make the front page of reddit at all, but obviously peaked http://www.reddit.com/r/space/
Nelson Mandela remains the top story on many news sites and Yutu is about 4th-5th one down the list on western sites.
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Is this true??
(http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Sinus-iridum.png)
An annotated photograph of Chang'e 3's landing site, taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The arrow at lower left, shows the location of the Soviet Lunokhod 1 rover. Photo Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
How far is it?
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jumpjack, read the previous posts: CE-3 landed a few hundred kilometers to the east of that area. the landing site is not even included in the picture you posted
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Distance between Lunokhod 1 and Chang'e-3 is around 250 miles. No way to travel ;-) next time.
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Upcoming "mistery of true colors":
(http://bbs.9ifly.cn/data/attachment/forum/201312/14/231134ipx8tuwos9q00san.jpg)
(http://bbs.9ifly.cn/data/attachment/forum/201312/14/231134vo073i21o7yoexj3.jpg)
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jumpjack, read the previous posts: CE-3 landed a few hundred kilometers to the east of that area. the landing site is not even included in the picture you posted
I know that.
I don't know the scale!
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Distance between Lunokhod 1 and Chang'e-3 is around 250 miles. No way to travel ;-) next time.
Considering that Lunokhod-2 clocked 40+ km on the odometer in just a few months .. it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility, but Yutu will have other things to do than chase the remains of distant relatives around
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Distance between Lunokhod 1 and Chang'e-3 is around 250 miles. No way to travel ;-) next time.
Aren't nuclear batteries going to last 30 years? ;-) (unfortunately not)
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Is anybody able to register to weibo without providing cellphone number, personal data and real name and surname?!??
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Distance between Lunokhod 1 and Chang'e-3 is around 250 miles. No way to travel ;-) next time.
Aren't nuclear batteries going to last 30 years? ;-) (unfortunately not)
It's not powered by "nuclear batteries" - it is powered by solar cells. It does have a radioisotope heater unit ( RHU ) onboard to keep it warm.
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Chang E does not exceed 15 degrees tilt rabbit can safely release
[Chang E does not exceed 15 degrees inclination, the rabbit will be able to safely release] 14 evening, China's Chang-e III detector Enron sangrakwol. Sunze Zhou told reporters the chief architect of the detector system, as long as the lander tilt angle less than 15 degrees, the next inspection device, the "Rabbit" was the rover will be able to be released. Currently, researchers are calculated sangrakwol ground attitude. (Yu Xiaojie Li Zhihui)
In English...: ground check reveals maximum tilt 15° NOT exceeded: rover confirmed to be able to deploy.
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Distance between Lunokhod 1 and Chang'e-3 is around 250 miles. No way to travel ;-) next time.
Aren't nuclear batteries going to last 30 years? ;-) (unfortunately not)
It's not powered by "nuclear batteries" - it is powered by solar cells. It does have a radioisotope heater unit ( RHU ) onboard to keep it warm.
That's why I wrote "(unfortunately not)" and added a smiley.
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Chang E does not exceed 15 degrees tilt rabbit can safely release
[Chang E does not exceed 15 degrees inclination, the rabbit will be able to safely release] 14 evening, China's Chang-e III detector Enron sangrakwol. Sunze Zhou told reporters the chief architect of the detector system, as long as the lander tilt angle less than 15 degrees, the next inspection device, the "Rabbit" was the rover will be able to be released. Currently, researchers are calculated sangrakwol ground attitude. (Yu Xiaojie Li Zhihui)
In English...: ground check reveals maximum tilt 15° NOT exceeded: rover confirmed to be able to deploy.
What's the source on this?
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(http://jumpjack.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/landing-site-compared1.jpg?w=500&h=1024)
http://bbs.9ifly.cn/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=11199&pid=279596&fromuid=27122
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Chang E does not exceed 15 degrees tilt rabbit can safely release
[Chang E does not exceed 15 degrees inclination, the rabbit will be able to safely release] 14 evening, China's Chang-e III detector Enron sangrakwol. Sunze Zhou told reporters the chief architect of the detector system, as long as the lander tilt angle less than 15 degrees, the next inspection device, the "Rabbit" was the rover will be able to be released. Currently, researchers are calculated sangrakwol ground attitude. (Yu Xiaojie Li Zhihui)
In English...: ground check reveals maximum tilt 15° NOT exceeded: rover confirmed to be able to deploy.
What's the source on this?
Don't remember exact post, should be on page 111 or around:
http://bbs.9ifly.cn/thread-11199-111-1.html
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My analysis of the descent camera images and identification of the landing site in LRO imagery.
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=3105&view=findpost&p=205500
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My analysis of the descent camera images and identification of the landing site in LRO imagery.
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=3105&view=findpost&p=205500
Great work ! Power of mspaint science : )
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Was there a reason you couldn't post that here Hungry4info3? You're a member here, save us from having to go to many sites and keep it in one place please.
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Was there a reason you couldn't post that here Hungry4info3? You're a member here, save us from having to go to many sites and keep it in one place please.
Fair point.
Lat: ~44.1260, Lon: ~-19.5014.
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Thank you! Good work. My phone only works on this site not UMSF, so that helps!
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Didnt make the front page of reddit at all, but obviously peaked http://www.reddit.com/r/space/
Scratch that, this post (http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1sv51l/chinese_spacecraft_successfully_lands_on_the_moon/) went to front page. Lots of complaints about mainstream media failing to cover this
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Candidate surface feature identifications.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK1PDfZWU3E
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I followed all of the Apollo landings "live", twice on radio and the others on TV, and I got the same "buzz" with all of them - and the same for Chang'e 3.
Me too, and you're absolutely right - the buzz is still the same... I was glued to every minute of it.
I remember looking up at the Moon on Christmas 1968 and a shiver going down my spine realising there were three men orbiting it. Same for the landing missions. It's never looked the same in all the years since. :( Last night, I looked up (it was clear!!!) and felt the same way - wishing Jade Rabbit good luck for today...
It's a sobering thought that there are children alive today whose grandparents weren't born when Apollo 11 landed! But today gives hope that I may yet be able to hang on long enough to see more humans tred the dust of another world...
Nick
P.S. Check out the Apollo 11 Flight Journal Day 5 at MET 095:17:28 http://history.nasa.gov/ap11fj/14day5-landing-prep.htm (http://history.nasa.gov/ap11fj/14day5-landing-prep.htm) . Funny old life, isn't it...? ;)
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By a very strange coincidence, at the time Change'3 was making its descent to the lunar surface , the book "An Introduction to the Mathematics and Methods of Astrodynamics , Revised Edition" by Richard H. Battin - which I had ordered some weeks ago from an Amazon dealer - arrived by UK Royal Mail . Literally, 4 minutes before touchdown of Change'3 :-))
How strange is that !
For those not familiar with the name Richard H. Battin he was the Technical Director, Mission Development for the Apollo Guidance and Navigation Program during the 1960s. In fact, I have several of Dr Battin's papers including one called "Explicit and Unified Methods of Spacecraft Guidance" which carries a very good "easy mathematical" treatment of the Apollo trajectory from Earth to the Moon.
The book "An Introduction to the Mathematics and Methods of Astrodynamics , Revised Edition" is a different mathematical "animal " though :-))
Phill Parker
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So has landing site been confirmed as not being in sinus iridium yet? I notice the tv presenters were all referring to bay of rainbows in their pieces. only 2 hours togo for jade bunny to hop off lander 8)
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Correct. We landed in north central Mare Imbrium. Lat: ~44.1260, Lon: ~-19.5014.
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A "Spaceflight Now " report also suggests that the initial landing coordinates are:-
"....An initial position estimate put the landing site at 44.12 degrees north latitude and 19.51 degrees west longitude. The estimate will be refined over the coming days....."
Here is a "rough image" where that is - close to Laplace F crater on the map in Mare Imbrium.
Phill Parker
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Has there been any announcement of CCTV live coverage of the Yuto rover?
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Here is a better map having a "stab" at where Change'3 is on the lunar surface based on coordinates published so far.
Based on IAU/NASA/USGS online lunar maps
Phill
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Here is a better map having a "stab" at where Change'3 is on the lunar surface based on coordinates published so far.
Based on IAU/NASA/USGS online lunar maps
Are you aware of the analysis of the descent images here? http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=33511.msg1133006#msg1133006
I'm fairly certain the landing site is pinned down to within a few metres.
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That's one small step for mankind, but a giant leap for China!
Congratulations to the Chang'e 3 team.
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Yes aware of coordinates but it was an "early stab" at trying to show where on a lunar map - not a "guess" at co-ordinates.
Here is an even better map
Phill
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Yes aware of coordinates but it was an "early stab" at trying to show where on a lunar map - not a "guess" at co-ordinates.
Here is an even better map
Phill
Look it up on the LRO website Hungry4info3 was posting pictures from: http://target.lroc.asu.edu/q3/ . You can zoom in from the big picture all the way down to 0.5m per pixel, and lattitude and longitude at your mouse cursor are marked at the finer resolutions.
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CCTV live coverage : the rover has been deployed 30 minutes ago.
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According to CCTV, Yutu has successfully separated from the lander.
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Rolling onto the ramp.
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Moving 5-10 cm every timestep (however long that is)
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View of the surrounding area
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Lowering of the ramp.
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Rover sending back one picture per second
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Almost there
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Yutu rolling off the ramp.
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All wheels on the surface of the moon :)
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Lander designed for a year, rover 3 months. But totally expect a longer life out of it
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Congratulations to the Beijing teams on deploying Yutu to lunar surface.
Interesting deployment.
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All this happened about two hours ago (ramp photos 12:28 EST, rolling onto ramp 1:48 EST, ramp motion 2:10 EST). Apparently it went much more slowly than shown in the taped summary. Very impressive performance.
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Lander designed for a year, rover 3 months. But totally expect a longer life out of it
I think that the first Lunokhod was designed for three months of operations but it chugged around the Moon for ten months.
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Apparently, rover separation happened an hour earlier than planned.
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We already have the animated gif
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12141328-six-wheels-on-soil-for-yutu.html
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We already have the animated gif
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12141328-six-wheels-on-soil-for-yutu.html
Very nicely done. Congrats China!
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Well done China!! I watched the landing hours ago and had goosebumps as Chang'E 3 touched down.
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All this happened about two hours ago (ramp photos 12:28 EST, rolling onto ramp 1:48 EST, ramp motion 2:10 EST). Apparently it went much more slowly than shown in the taped summary. Very impressive performance.
Source?
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Should China put in a sneaky bid for the Google X prize? Maybe settle for even $5m? :P
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I noticed the clock in mission control jumping during the broadcast -- they were clearly condensing the time. Once there is a replay of the broadcast on Youtube we should be able to match events to times.
And here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFb1E63AxNI&feature=c4-overview&list=UUgrNz-aDmcr2uuto8_DL2jg
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It appears the broadcast skipped the moment when the ramp ends of the transposition mechanism made contact with the surface. It might have been illuminating to see if they were separately hinged, and how/if that compensated for any difference in the cross-track height of the lunar surface.
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Google translation of http://news.xinhuanet.com/mil/2013-12/15/c_118559357.htm :
Xinhua Beijing December 15 (Reporter Li Xuanliang, Tian Zhao Yun) Beijing time at 4:35 on December 15, Chang E III lander and rover separation, "rabbit No." rover arrived on the lunar surface smoothly.
At 21:11 on the 14th, Chang E III successfully landed on the lunar longitude 19.5 degrees north latitude and 44.1 degrees east of Rainbow Bay area, then according to plan and carry out inspections lander separated the preparatory work.
At 23:45 on the 14th, the ground technical personnel for two separated the implementation of conditions, including the landing of environmental parameters, device status, the incident angle of the sun, etc., for a final check to make sure. Then, send commands to the Chang-e III, two separation begins.
Reporters at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center flight control screen to see the hall, Chang E III lander safely stand on the lunar surface, solar wing was expanded. "Rabbit" rover stand at the top landing, expand solar wings outstretched mast.
"Rover moves to the transfer mechanism for recognition." 3:10, rover begins to move slowly to the transfer agency.
"Rover moves into place." 4:06, transfer agency normally unlocked, gently supports the weight of patrol started landing, touching the lunar surface, and between the lander and lunar surface put up an inclined ladder.
Subsequently, the "Rabbit" slow walk down along the inclined ladder. 4:35, "rabbit" on the moon, the moon's surface printed a deep traces. Surveillance cameras to record the lander complete this process, and imaging data will be returned promptly to the ground.
According to reports, with the lander with rover separation, will be two Intermateability shot imaging, and carry out a series of inspections in place to detect and survey activities.
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Congrats to China on an excellent landing and deployment!
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Good coverage, NSF! Well done!
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Wonderful! Congratulations to everyone involved in this!! :)
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In my opinion there's still plenty of exploration of the moon left to do so well done China!
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From the Xinhua twitter, without explanation of what exactly it is.
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From the Xinhua twitter, without explanation of what exactly it is.
Well it looks like a properly color-balanced image, to me. Beautiful.
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I'm pretty sure the bottom larger rocks in the new image are the same as a few of the rocks on the far rim of the 20 metre crater we landed near.
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Congratulations. A most excellent achievement. Welcome to the moon.
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P.S. Check out the Apollo 11 Flight Journal Day 5 at MET 095:17:28 http://history.nasa.gov/ap11fj/14day5-landing-prep.htm (http://history.nasa.gov/ap11fj/14day5-landing-prep.htm) . Funny old life, isn't it...? ;)
095:17:28 Evans: Roger. Among the large headlines concerning Apollo this morning, is one asking that you watch for a lovely girl with a big rabbit. An ancient legend says a beautiful Chinese girl called Chang-O has been living there for 4,000 years. It seems she was banished to the Moon because she stole the pill of immortality from her husband. You might also look for her companion, a large Chinese rabbit, who is easy to spot since he is always standing on his hind feet in the shade of a cinnamon tree. The name of the rabbit is not reported.
[Chang-O is also spelled Ch'ang O and, in the more modern rendition, Chang'e.]
Wow, now 44 years later China has landed the beautiful Chinese girl called Chang'e and her jade rabbit Yutu on the Moon. What a beautiful sentiment, thank you for finding that gem Nick!
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P.S. Check out the Apollo 11 Flight Journal Day 5 at MET 095:17:28 http://history.nasa.gov/ap11fj/14day5-landing-prep.htm (http://history.nasa.gov/ap11fj/14day5-landing-prep.htm) . Funny old life, isn't it...? ;)
095:17:28 Evans: Roger. Among the large headlines concerning Apollo this morning, is one asking that you watch for a lovely girl with a big rabbit. An ancient legend says a beautiful Chinese girl called Chang-O has been living there for 4,000 years. It seems she was banished to the Moon because she stole the pill of immortality from her husband. You might also look for her companion, a large Chinese rabbit, who is easy to spot since he is always standing on his hind feet in the shade of a cinnamon tree. The name of the rabbit is not reported.
[Chang-O is also spelled Ch'ang O and, in the more modern rendition, Chang'e.]
Wow, now 44 years later China has landed the beautiful Chinese girl called Chang'e and her jade rabbit Yutu on the Moon. What a beautiful sentiment, thank you for finding that gem Nick!
:) yup! That made my evening.
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CCTVNEWS @cctvnews 8m
The rover Yutu will take pictures of the lander of #ChangE3 from 5 different angles on Sunday.
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P.S. Check out the Apollo 11 Flight Journal Day 5 at MET 095:17:28 http://history.nasa.gov/ap11fj/14day5-landing-prep.htm (http://history.nasa.gov/ap11fj/14day5-landing-prep.htm) . Funny old life, isn't it...? ;)
095:17:28 Evans: Roger. Among the large headlines concerning Apollo this morning, is one asking that you watch for a lovely girl with a big rabbit. An ancient legend says a beautiful Chinese girl called Chang-O has been living there for 4,000 years. It seems she was banished to the Moon because she stole the pill of immortality from her husband. You might also look for her companion, a large Chinese rabbit, who is easy to spot since he is always standing on his hind feet in the shade of a cinnamon tree. The name of the rabbit is not reported.
[Chang-O is also spelled Ch'ang O and, in the more modern rendition, Chang'e.]
Wow, now 44 years later China has landed the beautiful Chinese girl called Chang'e and her jade rabbit Yutu on the Moon. What a beautiful sentiment, thank you for finding that gem Nick!
Nice! I did remember that - I have a feeling it was mentioned it Mike Collins' book? -
, and recalled it at the time of the CE-1 launch but had forgotten it again- thanks for the reminder
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Hah! Congrats to the Yutu Team! Great to see it roll off of its ramp onto the lunar surface.
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After all these years....the lunar surface again!!!!
ěm moved...really.
Now i hope to see a man on the moon soonest.
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After walking with the rovers on Mars, it just hit me how different this is going to be. I wish we could stop getting distracted by the Nationality discussions - we're all about to receive a wonderful gift. I can't wait for the exploration to start.
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I just notices how young the entire team is, and I have to look it up. It turns out, the team's average age is only 32.4 years old. How's that for a aerospace project!!! May all these young guys and gals have a wonder future and career with the Chinese space program.
http://www.chinanews.com/gn/2013/12-02/5566366.shtml
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Congratulations China and best wishes for the continued success of your nation's ambitious space program!
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I just notices how young the entire team is, and I have to look it up. It turns out, the team's average age is only 32.4 years old. How's that for a aerospace project!!! May all these young guys and gals have a wonder future and career with the Chinese space program.
http://www.chinanews.com/gn/2013/12-02/5566366.shtml
At the time of Apollo 11 the average age of the mission control team was 26.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-m-clash/apollo-11-anniversary-_b_1684083.html
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My congratulations 8) :) !!!
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From the Xinhua twitter, without explanation of what exactly it is.
Very nice... But hopefully we will be able to see much higher quality images soon.
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Btw, Chang'e-3 in mandarin appears to be written as 嫦娥3 so these two searches will give you a bunch of the freshestestest incomprehensible links but sometimes latest posted images, too :
https://twitter.com/search?q=嫦娥&src=typd
https://news.google.com/news/story?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=zh-TW&q=嫦娥3&ncl=dZLV4LEVCstHriMgLVNL19sfDnuTM&cf=all&scoring=n
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Should China put in a sneaky bid for the Google X prize? Maybe settle for even $5m? :P
IIUC, the GLXP was supposed to expire if a government landed on the Moon first.
I believe the rules have now been changed to ignore Chang'E and allow the GLXP process to continue regardless.
Nevertheless, my full - hearted congratulations to the Chinese team, not just for a fantastic job done, but also for setting out to do this in the first place.
I even find myself surprised at my reaction to this as a "big deal". As excited as I was beforehand for another probe to visit the Moon (like EG Chandraayan (sp?)), the landing itself is much more historic than I'd appreciated it would be beforehand. Pleased to see the swell of "why didn't I know about this beforehand" on Twitter.
Cheers, Martin
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I just notices how young the entire team is, and I have to look it up. It turns out, the team's average age is only 32.4 years old. How's that for a aerospace project!!! May all these young guys and gals have a wonder future and career with the Chinese space program.
http://www.chinanews.com/gn/2013/12-02/5566366.shtml
At the time of Apollo 11 the average age of the mission control team was 26.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-m-clash/apollo-11-anniversary-_b_1684083.html
I guess that's a sign of a expanding and promising field. Lots of positions open, lots of promotions and attracting the best and brightest kids out of college.
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Should China put in a sneaky bid for the Google X prize? Maybe settle for even $5m? :P
IIUC, the GLXP was supposed to expire if a government landed on the Moon first.
Not expire, just become a smaller prize.. and yes, they cancelled that.
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I just notices how young the entire team is, and I have to look it up. It turns out, the team's average age is only 32.4 years old. How's that for a aerospace project!!! May all these young guys and gals have a wonder future and career with the Chinese space program.
http://www.chinanews.com/gn/2013/12-02/5566366.shtml
China's median age is 36.3 years old, so a 32.4 years old team may not be that dramatically young.
btw is it possible for this rover to last for 10 years like the MER Opportunity?
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btw is it possible for this rover to last for 10 years like the MER Opportunity?
the lunar thermal environment is much much worse than on Mars. I don't expect Yutu to last this much
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Yeah; I doubt it - the Moon's surface is drenched in far more radiation than Mars and the thermal night/day cycles per month are pretty harsh. If it lasts two or three times the design life, I don't think anyone would be unhappy.
I'm just loving the pictures! The early lunar morning light and colour palette of tans reminds me eerily of Apollo 11's time at Tranquility Base... :)
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tonight beijing time 10.30pm have Lander and rover photo shooting session. possible will have live cover from CCTV.
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A more complete descent video. But I think we still have not seen the complete sequence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA__4SnHqH8
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btw is it possible for this rover to last for 10 years like the MER Opportunity?
the lunar thermal environment is much much worse than on Mars. I don't expect Yutu to last this much
But we don't need to rely on any dust devil to keep solar panels clean.
So it's mostly a matter of how long lithium batteries can last. And MER's batteries lasted at least 10 years.
I don't know expected life of electronics under Moon radiation environment, but for 14 days per month Yutu only receives Galactic Cosmic Rays, completely shielded from solar wind by the whole Moon.
Anyway it just came to my mind they should have sent the rover close to one of the "moon caverns" recently discovered, rather than "just somewhere just to test our technology"!! :-(
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tonight beijing time 10.30pm have Lander and rover photo shooting session. possible will have live cover from CCTV.
which should mean 14:30 UTC.
Wich probably well become 11:30 UTC so it already happened. ;-)
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Thanks to big effort by Emily (http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12141328-six-wheels-on-soil-for-yutu.html)in copyingpastincopyingpastincopyinpasting :-) I was able to create this full coverage of rover deployment:
(http://jumpjack.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/deplyment-low-res1.gif)
Hi-res version is currently uploading to my site, stay tuned! :-)
http://is.gd/change3
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Hi-res version is currently uploading to my site, stay tuned! :-)
http://is.gd/change3
Youtube English version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziakx2_Ird0&feature=youtu.be
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Italian version
http://www.youreporter.it/video_Sbarco_del_rover_cinese_Yutu_dalla_sonda_Chang_e3_sulla_Luna
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Youtube English version:
Nice job, thanks!
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Far more coverage of this in the media than the last Chinese manned flight, but a fair chunk of this coverage seemed about analysing the political & economic meaning of the landing for China than the actual event itself.
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I don't know expected life of electronics under Moon radiation environment, but for 14 days per month Yutu only receives Galactic Cosmic Rays, completely shielded from solar wind by the whole Moon.
I'm no expert on interplanetary plasmas, but it's my understanding that the large-scale turbulence of the solar wind is such that a substantial flux reaches the moon's surface even during the lunar night.
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CCTV News reports live coverage to begin in about an hour from now (1430).
Process of taking pictures from different locations around the lander expected to take up to 20 hours due to terrain.
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Should China put in a sneaky bid for the Google X prize? Maybe settle for even $5m? :P
IIUC, the GLXP was supposed to expire if a government landed on the Moon first.
Not expire, just become a smaller prize.. and yes, they cancelled that.
Ah, many thanks for that.
cheers, Martin
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http://english.cntv.cn/live/
Special broadcast just started
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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
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They're about to show pictures on CCTV
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But we don't need to rely on any dust devil to keep solar panels clean.
So it's mostly a matter of how long lithium batteries can last. And MER's batteries lasted at least 10 years.
Lunar dust is very abrasive. They may have a problem with failure of moving parts.
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Nothing shown so far, that's different from what we've already seen
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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
Watching the rover cameras locations etc video good information.
Also found the English pronunciation of Yutu to be U-2
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In the excellent tutorial of Yutu shown on CCTV, it looked like the high-gain antenna was locked to the mast cameras, so the rover may not have the capability of transmitting photos to Earth in realtime. Seems like they are filling for time now waiting for the pictures.
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this was posted on Facebook a few minutes ago
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Why does it look like all the images they posted (apart from the landing sequence) are snapshots of a computer monitor or some other display instead of the actual data stream?
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the image was posted on the China Space facebook page. just in case other pics show up here is the link:
https://www.facebook.com/ChinaSpace
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I congratulate China on this incredible acheivement.
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this was posted on Facebook a few minutes ago
That's amazing!
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Say you want an image I have. Do you want me to just send you the jpeg *or* display that image on my monitor and then use my phone to take a picture of that image and send you that instead? Which one do you think preserves the original quality?
This very much doesn't look like a "raw" image.
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Why does it look like all the images they posted (apart from the landing sequence) are snapshots of a computer monitor or some other display instead of the actual data stream?
You hit the point...the images were displayed on the large screens of the control center and then the media like CCTV recorded and broadcasted them using another cameras.
Maybe there is no interconnection between the flight control and broadcasting system.
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They are missing an opportunity here, IMHO. I get the feeling these images could be blowing our socks off if released in the source quality instead of just this "cool, but only for what it represents" feeling.
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This is not a time to moan about the quality. That's an amazing image.
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Why is a rover camera image being released in black and white? Even their monitors must be color.
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this was posted on Facebook a few minutes ago
Apparently this was taken by the NavCam and not by the PanCam.
They are missing an opportunity here, IMHO. I get the feeling these images could be blowing our socks off if released in the source quality instead of just this "cool, but only for what it represents" feeling.
Well, you know this is China....sometimes the photos show up in all kinds of weird places. ::)
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David Harland has just posted this from Apollo 11 which is rather appropriate.
“Among the headlines about Apollo this morning,” said CapCom Ron Evans during his wake-up call to the crew of Apollo 11 on the morning of Sunday, 20 July, “there is one asking that you watch for a lovely girl with a big rabbit. An ancient legend says a beautiful Chinese girl called Chang-o has been living there for 4,000 years. It seems she was banished to the Moon because she stole the pill of immortality from her husband. You might also look for her companion, a large Chinese rabbit, who is easy to spot since he is always standing on his hind feet in the shade of a cinnamon tree; the name of the rabbit is not reported.” The astronauts promised that they would “keep a close eye out for the bunny girl”.
Not seen any cinnamon trees in the photos yet.
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session photo start now.
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Pic of Yutu
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Rather then complain about the picture quality let's concentrate in what we can see in the picture of the lander...I'll start...
Looks to me like,the landing site is quite flat and free of boulders..the landing pads don't seem to have sunk too deeply...the landing rocket exhaust doesn't seem to blasted the dirt too much...what else can be discerned from this picture ?
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As the commentators just mentioned, the color balance looks excellent.
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Not see any cinnamon trees in the photos yet.
Well, I'm going to hazard a guess that a spoonful of cinnamon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXkGtJUP0WE) and a spoonful of moon-dust will have the same physiological effect on a human being. #AncientChineseWisdom
And... the on-topic part of this post: Is either one of those two probes going to take a picture of the Earth? Have they already? (If the high-gain antenna is fixed to the camera.. and they're pointing in the same direction.. then the rover should be able to get live footage... WHILE roving! :D )
Come to think of it.. anyone know if the J-class Apollo missions ever shot footage with the Hasselblads from (and showing) the rover, a changing lunascape, with the Earth in the sky? The fact that all the sites/locations were always well on the near side would make me think that the Earth would've been too high up in the sky to show up in the FOV.
But over 3 months... Yutu can definitely grab such a shot. :D #Drool
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Another screenshot from CCTV
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Not see any cinnamon trees in the photos yet.
And... the on-topic part of this post: Is either one of those two probes going to take a picture of the Earth?
The Earth will be a thin crescent as seen from the moon at this time and fairly close to the sun.
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One reason for the mutual photography could be to calibrate the cameras since they know the colours of the rover and descent stage.
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Pic of Change 3
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from CCTV live, Lander picture .
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One reason for the mutual photography could be to calibrate the cameras since they know the colours of the rover and descent stage.
If the current color balance is correct (and the Chinese flag color looks correct to me) this dark chocolate lunar regolith reminds me of the Apollo 17 site.
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Might be just the angle of the shot, but the rover looks to be quite close to that crater or depression..That seems quite aggressive of the rover drivers to me ...or would that have been an autonomous drive ? ...they've obviously practiced on Earth but still, they've just landed and I would think they need to get a feel for handling of the rover on the lunar surface.
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OK...some info from that interview.
Ground penetrating radar is operating, and they've gotten back some observations.
They're not planning on heading in the direction of the crater.
Currently solar angle is ~ 30 degrees.
The rover's going to go into hibernation from the 16th to the 23rd - because it's too hot to work during the lunar noon
(Rover taking a cat-nap according to the anchor... surely a rabbit nap?)
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I don't recall that the Lunokhod rovers required a midday siesta. Maybe it is Chinese caution.
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And... the on-topic part of this post: Is either one of those two probes going to take a picture of the Earth? Have they already? (If the high-gain antenna is fixed to the camera.. and they're pointing in the same direction.. then the rover should be able to get live footage... WHILE roving! :D )
That's what I've read somewhere it is going to happen! :) HD-3D live footage from the moon! :o
Come to think of it.. anyone know if the J-class Apollo missions ever shot footage with the Hasselblads from (and showing) the rover, a changing lunascape, with the Earth in the sky? The fact that all the sites/locations were always well on the near side would make me think that the Earth would've been too high up in the sky to show up in the FOV.
It will be quite hard to take a picture including earth and moon due to different light, I think.
The rover's going to go into hibernation from the 16th to the 23rd - because it's too hot to work during the lunar noon
(Rover taking a cat-nap according to the anchor... surely a rabbit nap?)
I wonder if Yuyu will get a rest under Chang'e shadow till the noon pass.
Anyway, this is the schedule for next operations appeared on youtube:
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Apparently a better version of the descent camera "slideshow" has just been shown on TV.... let me see if I can get it to here..... 8)
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OK.. a news bulletin now says that the rover's going to circle the lander with a radius of 10m to take pictures of the lander from all the directions (2 shots of the side of the flag -- one from 10m and the other from 18m).
Apparently the Chinese President and Vice President were there for the image transmissions today.
And they've cut to other news.
Btw, the CNSA web-page for the lunar program's outdated. What's the agency that needs to be contacted for imagery data, and how long is the proprietary use period? I ask because I assume that agency will have a webpage for the dissemination of the raw images etc.
Then again, we're just assuming they're calibrated images... CNSA might want to do some post-processing before releasing the image files. The http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=33511.msg1132545#msg1132545 (http://[url=http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=33511.msg1132545#msg1132545)]instrumentation details for the PanCam and the MastCam in the forum post don't mention whether the camera is operating with three separate channels (different filters - be it physical or electronic, but using the same focal plane array), or if its a Bayer filter. Anyone? If it's the former, then changing exposure values between successive images might throw off the colour etc.
It will be quite hard to take a picture including earth and moon due to different light, I think.
The Earthrise films seemed to have no problem. The Apollo ones, and Kaguya (I don't remember any other probe doing one, but most likely they all would have). Yes, these were both orbital, and the ground wouldn't have filled up a lot of the frame.. Anyway, the Earth isn't exactly a dull object. Plus, you can set two different exposure levels because of the two cameras and merge the images (they're going to for the 3D anyway).. so I think this is really feasible.
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I don't recall that the Lunokhod rovers required a midday siesta. Maybe it is Chinese caution.
The LCRU TV system on the Apollo 15-17 rovers was always overheating due to dust on the radiators. They all ultimately overheated and died around lunar noon. Recall the CSM/LM stack had a slow spin to avoid temperature extremes. No spinning allowed on the surface.
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Currently I see phase "A" completed: turn 180° and take a snapshot.
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Apparently a better version of the descent camera "slideshow" has just been shown on TV.... let me see if I can get it to here..... 8)
That would be fantastic!
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Apparently a better version of the descent camera "slideshow" has just been shown on TV.... let me see if I can get it to here..... 8)
That would be fantastic!
Amazing video stitched from images from the descent camera! ;D
http://news.cntv.cn/2013/12/15/VIDE1387092680807230.shtml (http://news.cntv.cn/2013/12/15/VIDE1387092680807230.shtml)
(will try to get it to Youtube later)
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Come to think of it.. anyone know if the J-class Apollo missions ever shot footage with the Hasselblads from (and showing) the rover, a changing lunascape, with the Earth in the sky? The fact that all the sites/locations were always well on the near side would make me think that the Earth would've been too high up in the sky to show up in the FOV.
I recall that on one stop at South Massif on Apollo 17 where the rover was on a sharply inclined slope, the TV camera did momentarily catch a shot of the Earth and the Massif together.
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Couple of questions that are "niggling" me :-
1) On rover deployment . was the Yutu "pushed" to the ramp before lowering OR did it roll to the ramp before it was lowered. Certainly discern wheels rolling once on ramp but I could not decide whether they were rolling while it moved from top Change'3 platform ?
2) After all the investigations and images of Sinus Iridum by Change'2 and the pre-released information for Change'3 by Chinese, why did they decide to land at least one (if not two) revolutions earlier - thus landing in Mare Imbrium ? My current thinking is that this earlier landing allowed for wider TV coverage by the likes of CCTV during Chinese prime TV time whereas one or two later revolutions would have put it just before and/or after midnight Beijing time. But,really, I cannot see the mission control folk wanting to "bow" to TV pressure unless directed from "above" ?
whatever the reason, I'm still excited they landed successfully at their first soft landing attempt and that the Yutu is rolling around Mare Imbrium. At least geological information it gathers can be compared to ther Mare Imbrium landing site geology data from previous lander missions by other countries.
Phill
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Good work guys. I know we have GP and others scouring the Chinese forums, but
Apparently a better version of the descent camera "slideshow" has just been shown on TV.... let me see if I can get it to here..... 8)
That would be fantastic!
Amazing video stitched from images from the descent camera! ;D
http://news.cntv.cn/2013/12/15/VIDE1387092680807230.shtml (http://news.cntv.cn/2013/12/15/VIDE1387092680807230.shtml)
(will try to get it to Youtube later)
Good work GP. Some of these Chinese sites result in my PC having a fit, so if we can grab and accredit with linkage, that will work.
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2) After all the investigations and images of Sinus Iridum by Change'2 and the pre-released information for Change'3 by Chinese, why did they decide to land at least one (if not two) revolutions earlier - thus landing in Mare Imbrium ?
an early landing meant more time on the surface before the Moon set over Kashgar and LOS by the Chinese deep space network. I think that with a later landing they would not have been able to get Yutu on the surface on their first day
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Apparently a better version of the descent camera "slideshow" has just been shown on TV.... let me see if I can get it to here..... 8)
That would be fantastic!
Amazing video stitched from images from the descent camera! ;D
http://news.cntv.cn/2013/12/15/VIDE1387092680807230.shtml (http://news.cntv.cn/2013/12/15/VIDE1387092680807230.shtml)
(will try to get it to Youtube later)
Wicked. Thank you for the direct link!!
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Couple of questions that are "niggling" me :-
1) On rover deployment . was the Yutu "pushed" to the ramp before lowering OR did it roll to the ramp before it was lowered. Certainly discern wheels rolling once on ramp but I could not decide whether they were rolling while it moved from top Change'3 platform ?
It was commanded to drive. Three separate commands. It's in the video on Emily's blogpost (http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12141328-six-wheels-on-soil-for-yutu.html) covering this.
I'm wondering about the mechanisms they had to prevent the rover from rolling off the transposition mechanism..especially since the rails pitch downward for some time, until the lowering is fully complete.
Did the rover energise all 6 wheel driving motors as brakes? (i.e. since the wheels can be driven in forward or reverse, energising the coils to the point just prior to inducing reverse motion) The wheels themselves are mesh..so was there some stop-spike that allows rolling translation (blocked by the brake) but prevents sliding?
Or was it all just static friction, and carefully chosen materials?
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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.
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some more pics of the rover visible in this video (around 3:10)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFT3UhZ5cq8
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But I expect Chang'E 4 to land on the other unit, actually in Sinus Iridum.
Aren't they really going to land another mission in same place?!??? :o
There are much more interesting place to go to!
(http://c2431622.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Lunar-pit-1.jpg)
(http://moonzoo.s3.amazonaws.com/v10/slices/000219656.jpg)
Landing a sampling rover inside one of these holes would REALLY make China look "better than USA" like they desire so much!!
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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.
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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.
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"Aren't they really going to land another mission in same place?!??? There are much more interesting place to go to!"
They have not said this, I am speculating. Why? - because this is the only area Chang'E 2 imaged at high resolution. And they are NOT landing at the same place - it's a different geological unit and might permit a drive up into the hills of Montes Jura as well. I have also speculated that Chang'E 5 and 6 will sample the two basalt units, so both in this region as well. If you want to see the other sites you may have to rely on GLXP. Astrobotic is planning a trip to a pit in Lacus Mortis.
Phil
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Apparently a better version of the descent camera "slideshow" has just been shown on TV.... let me see if I can get it to here..... 8)
That would be fantastic!
Amazing video stitched from images from the descent camera! ;D
http://news.cntv.cn/2013/12/15/VIDE1387092680807230.shtml (http://news.cntv.cn/2013/12/15/VIDE1387092680807230.shtml)
(will try to get it to Youtube later)
Wicked. Thank you for the direct link!!
[Plutogno]
Makes sense about tracking availability but surely they would have known this well before mission launched ?
Anyway, thanks for answer
Ap
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Yes, they knew, but they go from being conservative to being more confident, as we do.
Phil
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Couple of questions that are "niggling" me :-
1) On rover deployment . was the Yutu "pushed" to the ramp before lowering OR did it roll to the ramp before it was lowered. Certainly discern wheels rolling once on ramp but I could not decide whether they were rolling while it moved from top Change'3 platform ?
It was commanded to drive. Three separate commands. It's in the video on Emily's blogpost (http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12141328-six-wheels-on-soil-for-yutu.html) covering this.
I'm wondering about the mechanisms they had to prevent the rover from rolling off the transposition mechanism..especially since the rails pitch downward for some time, until the lowering is fully complete.
Did the rover energise all 6 wheel driving motors as brakes? (i.e. since the wheels can be driven in forward or reverse, energising the coils to the point just prior to inducing reverse motion) The wheels themselves are mesh..so was there some stop-spike that allows rolling translation (blocked by the brake) but prevents sliding?
Or was it all just static friction, and carefully chosen materials?
Couple of questions that are "niggling" me :-
1) On rover deployment . was the Yutu "pushed" to the ramp before lowering OR did it roll to the ramp before it was lowered. Certainly discern wheels rolling once on ramp but I could not decide whether they were rolling while it moved from top Change'3 platform ?
It was commanded to drive. Three separate commands. It's in the video on Emily's blogpost (http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12141328-six-wheels-on-soil-for-yutu.html) covering this.
I'm wondering about the mechanisms they had to prevent the rover from rolling off the transposition mechanism..especially since the rails pitch downward for some time, until the lowering is fully complete.
Did the rover energise all 6 wheel driving motors as brakes? (i.e. since the wheels can be driven in forward or reverse, energising the coils to the point just prior to inducing reverse motion) The wheels themselves are mesh..so was there some stop-spike that allows rolling translation (blocked by the brake) but prevents sliding?
Or was it all just static friction, and carefully chosen materials?
Thanks AJA. I only viewed that early video that was released very shortly after deployment and with the single frame and intervals between them , I did not initially see any wheel rotation but later videos do seem to indicate early wheel rotation.
Like you, interested to know how they judged distance to roll - I assume a sensor to count wheel/hub/axle rotation and therefore know distance travelled ?
AP
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If the current color balance is correct (and the Chinese flag color looks correct to me) this dark chocolate lunar regolith reminds me of the Apollo 17 site.
The Apollo TV images might have been brownish due to the TV quality but the Hasselblad images all show a very grey landscape
http://www.apolloarchive.com/apollo_gallery.html
You can't go by the Chinese flag for colour balance as it is red anyway. Need something white which isn't over exposed.
Keith
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Amazing video stitched from images from the descent camera! ;D
http://news.cntv.cn/2013/12/15/VIDE1387092680807230.shtml (http://news.cntv.cn/2013/12/15/VIDE1387092680807230.shtml)
Wow! Simply wow!
Can't put into words how happy I am to witness a Moon landing and new images from the Moon! Experiencing such an event is no longer confined to reading history books and watching documentaries. We're living it. Thank you China. And hopefully others will follow soon.
One thing about that vid: would be great if there was altimeter data to go with it.
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the landing video is now more conveniently on Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaQTSTrbT3w
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I do actually "like" this Chinese rover deployment mechanism - even though would like more detail :-))
I'm sure we could all design some extra design mods to it:-))
Like , perhaps, having the small end ramp section being vertical while rover rolls outs towards it .
Once rover positioned on top ramp , then that ramp section lowers to meet ground ? Slight extra mechanism overhead .
But, I really think their design has merit and maybe could be reused on different missions ? Imagine it will depend upon weight/mass of rover eg. MSL compared Yutu since could become a quite heavy "weighty" mechanism - would a beefed up version have worked for MSL mission ?
[But this topic maybe for another forum away from this live update section]
Anyway, thank you China for an early Christmas present and will be following throughout the season and throughout the coming months while Change'3 / Yutu operational. Please GIVE frequent updates :-))
A-P
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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!
Regarding the movement of the rover; it's simple, they're likely not just DC motors... they're either brushless, steppers or servos so they have feedback. Any of those can hold their position (torque at 0 rpm) or could have an electromagnetic brake (brake motor).
-Iain
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That footage is incredible. I so wish we'd had something like that for MSL!
well...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Esj5juUzhpU
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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.
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the landing video is now more conveniently on Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaQTSTrbT3w
Incredible Video! Possibly the best Lunar landing footage ever!
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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
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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/
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the landing video is now more conveniently on Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaQTSTrbT3w
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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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
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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:
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaQTSTrbT3w
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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 highly doubt that. The general SpaceX and Grasshopper launches get more response and coverage than this Moon landing got I think. American public is excited about Americans doing things. The general public thinks of China as the country that makes all the plastic toys.
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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.
<video snip>
I was including that in my statement. Where's the raw mpg? And photos without news media watermarks.
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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.
<video snip>
I was including that in my statement. Where's the raw mpg? And photos without news media watermarks.
With that attitude I doubt any release would satisfy you.
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With that attitude I doubt any release would satisfy you.
.. and there's nothing wrong with that. A number of people I know have been unsatisfied as the goals are unquestionably propaganda "national pride" and "science". My question to them is: why you gotta act like no-one cares about that stuff, just because you don't?
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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.
It's great that you can share how underwhelmed and unimpressed you are with this, but some of us do find it interesting.
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It's great that you can share how underwhelmed and unimpressed you are with this, but some of us do find it interesting.
Blackstar and I agreeing on something.. must be Christmas time again.
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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.
The engineering excellence associated with all elements of this type of mission is almost beyond words.
Getting to witness almost all of it in near real time was/is a space nerds dream!
I can only speak for myself but I felt so happy for all of the Chinese people and engineers!
If you have ever seen the film "In the Shadow of the Moon", Mike Collins says that when the crew of Apollo 11 went on its world tour after the success of their mission...they were greeted (the world over) with comments of "we did it"...as if the people of the world vicariously accomplished what the Americans had done with the landing.
I cant help but feel the same way with this landing. It really is a triumph of the people of Earth if you can get a little philosophical about it!
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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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaQTSTrbT3w
Flipped over and in HD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzZkF1MAsb8
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Nice special overview of rover in English by CCTV that even kids can follow
http://english.cntv.cn/program/newsupdate/20131215/104112.shtml
And indeed, their mast cam and high gain antenna are on the same pan unit
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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. ???
When we say colour calibration... what exactly are we going for? To mimic how something will look to the human eye? How is that objective? Also, apart from sensor drift, and different electronic noise etc. - what optical difference exists between the Earth and the moon environment that requires re-calibration once on the moon? A moonwalker would also face these different optical conditions (outside of his helmet i.e.) too .... so are we really calibrating, or distorting?
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?
Looking at the position of the shadow of the rover on the surface makes me think that the array on the right of the picture was tilted to make the plane normal to solar angle of incidence..? The screengrab of the lander's solar panels (http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=33511.msg1132802#msg1132802) from this post, seems to depict similar tracking ability.
The array on the left of the Yutu pic is relatively flat though.. maybe, unlike the lander, the panels on the rover only have a 90 deg range of motion?
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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.
Thanks for the link & no doubt we'll see Chang'6 as well as its backup. Makes you wonder what Chang'e 7 will be.
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Thanks for the link & no doubt we'll see Chang'6 as well as its backup. Makes you wonder what Chang'e 7 will be.
In addition to previous announcements discussed up in the thread, multiple sources just put out this story too
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/12/16/us-china-space-idUKBRE9BF03N20131216
(Reuters) - China aims to launch its next unmanned lunar probe in 2017, with the key aim of collecting and bringing back lunar samples, an official said on Monday, after the country's first probe landed successfully on the moon over the weekend.
The development of the Chang'e 5 probe, tasked with the moon sampling mission, is well underway and it is expected to be launched around 2017, a spokesman for the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense said.
Note that a couple days ago there were some possibly misreported stories about Chang'e 5 being put on hold or delayed.
Another note, in the morning CCTV live coverage there was a segment with Indian space jouranlists, who mentioned that Chandrayaan-2 could fly in a "year or two", although written reports all refer to "about three years from now"
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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?
Before the event, I thought my response would be somewhat similar.
Although I came to the coverage after the event, I was surprised at the strength of my "we're back on the Moon again" response.
And me a Moon - firster, too.
I now believe this will attract the same sort of attention that the Mars rovers achieved.
Cheers, Martin
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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.
As others have said, thanks for sharing.
I remember Luna 9, Surveyor, Apollo, Lunokhod. The sample return missions. This fills me with the same excitement.
Orbiters are useful, interesting and all, but there is nothing like getting down and dirty on the lunar surface (or any other planet for that matter). We haven't seen that since 1976.
Poor images of the Moon? You must be joking!
And who would have thought in 1976 that the next time we landed on the Moon it would be a Chinese mission, and we would see it live?
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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. ???
When we say colour calibration... what exactly are we going for? To mimic how something will look to the human eye? How is that objective? Also, apart from sensor drift, and different electronic noise etc. - what optical difference exists between the Earth and the moon environment that requires re-calibration once on the moon? A moonwalker would also face these different optical conditions (outside of his helmet i.e.) too .... so are we really calibrating, or distorting?
Colour calibration is essential to extract the maximum scientific information from images. Which is why they are usually carried. I would be very surprised if Chang'e 3 and Yutu don't have them, we just may not have seen them yet.
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Any news about any site collecting original raw images?
And about 3d images and 3d videos from rover?
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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. ???
When we say colour calibration... what exactly are we going for? To mimic how something will look to the human eye? How is that objective? Also, apart from sensor drift, and different electronic noise etc. - what optical difference exists between the Earth and the moon environment that requires re-calibration once on the moon? A moonwalker would also face these different optical conditions (outside of his helmet i.e.) too .... so are we really calibrating, or distorting?
The difference between Earth and the Moon is that the light curves are significantly shifted by the filtering of the atmosphere. What is "white" on Earth under natural light would not be white under direct unfiltered sunlight.
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Nice special overview of rover in English by CCTV that even kids can follow
http://english.cntv.cn/program/newsupdate/20131215/104112.shtml
And indeed, their mast cam and high gain antenna are on the same pan unit
What are the advantages of this configuration?
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Flipped over and in HD:
<video snip>
Very cool!
What's always difficult with Moon landing videos (i.e. also the same with Apollo vids) is how hard it is to get a sense of altitude above the ground. Seeing the horizon helps somewhat, but I think its curvature is exaggerated by the camera lens.
As the lander gets closer and closer to the lunar surface, more and more craters appear that look just like the bigger craters seen from higher up, so it's like a never-ending fractal image.
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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.
You seem to seeing different images to me. The video and photos I have seen have been excellent.
This is a failure of the Chinese government IMO.
Sounds like an agenda to me. Methodologically rather like the Apollo or Mars hoax or people. Set up an arbitrary standard of what you would do if you were CNSA/NASA and then, when they don't to this, they have "failed".
The Chinese have not failed just because they are not dancing to your expectations.
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What's always difficult with Moon landing videos (i.e. also the same with Apollo vids) is how hard it is to get a sense of altitude above the ground. Seeing the horizon helps somewhat, but I think its curvature is exaggerated by the camera lens.
From my subjective perspective it looked about right. I assume the camera experts among us can clarify this,
As the lander gets closer and closer to the lunar surface, more and more craters appear that look just like the bigger craters seen from higher up, so it's like a never-ending fractal image.
It certainly looks like that! But it's not strictly correct, as the Mare surface is not saturated with craters of this size, unlike the lunar highlands. So there are lots of flat areas between the craters.
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The Apollo TV images might have been brownish due to the TV quality but the Hasselblad images all show a very grey landscape
http://www.apolloarchive.com/apollo_gallery.html
Keith
The lunar surface actually shows a range of subtle colours depending on phase angle and composition. Different parental rocks have different tones of grey, and lunar volcanic and impact glasses can be grown, green, or orange.
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Thanks for the link & no doubt we'll see Chang'6 as well as its backup. Makes you wonder what Chang'e 7 will be.
In addition to previous announcements discussed up in the thread, multiple sources just put out this story too
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/12/16/us-china-space-idUKBRE9BF03N20131216
(Reuters) - China aims to launch its next unmanned lunar probe in 2017, with the key aim of collecting and bringing back lunar samples, an official said on Monday, after the country's first probe landed successfully on the moon over the weekend.
The development of the Chang'e 5 probe, tasked with the moon sampling mission, is well underway and it is expected to be launched around 2017, a spokesman for the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense said.
Note that a couple days ago there were some possibly misreported stories about Chang'e 5 being put on hold or delayed.
Another note, in the morning CCTV live coverage there was a segment with Indian space jouranlists, who mentioned that Chandrayaan-2 could fly in a "year or two", although written reports all refer to "about three years from now"
The Chang'e 3 design is adaptable to sample return is it not?
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The Chang'e 3 design is adaptable to sample return is it not?
Looking at how big is the lander, probably it's just a matter of replacing the rover by the "samples collector", which would be heavier and bigger.
I think we should look for Chang'e 4 and 5 designs to figure out the sampler design, if they are already available.
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The Chang'e 3 design is adaptable to sample return is it not?
Looking at how big is the lander, probably it's just a matter of replacing the rover by the "samples collector", which would be heavier and bigger.
I think we should look for Chang'e 4 and 5 designs to figure out the sampler design, if they are already available.
I think I saw somewhere that for Chang'e 5 they are going to do an automatic docking in lunar orbit of the sample return vehicle and a booster module which will then take the sample back to the Earth, similar to how Apollo returned the astrounauts from the lunar surface. This is different to the Soviet sample return missions in that the launcher from the lunar surface went directly back to the Earth. I think this is a stepping stone to a manned mission after Chang'e 6 when they have mastered automatic lunar orbit docking technologies.
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The lunar surface actually shows a range of subtle colours depending on phase angle and composition. Different parental rocks have different tones of grey, and lunar volcanic and impact glasses can be grown, green, or orange.
Only when you are relatively close up. The general view of the surface from any distance is grey. Not a chocolate brown as in these photos. Did you look at any of the surface photos on the link I posted?
During Apollo the only photos generally available to the public were in mainsteam magazines (Time, Life, Newsweek, Paris Match) and due to print quality in these days, the lunar surface ranged from green through brown. You now have access to these same photos in sites like Kipp Teague's and can see the true colour quality in the properly processed images from the original films.
These photos we are seeing now remind me very much of the magazine photos in the 60's. I don't know what type or quality of cameras are aboard and it may be that these are just RAW images which need further processing. However the Chinese are not noted for releasing high res images.
The difference between Earth and the Moon is that the light curves are significantly shifted by the filtering of the atmosphere. What is "white" on Earth under natural light would not be white under direct unfiltered sunlight.
Exactly. Comparing photos of the LM under different lighting is a good example. On earth the black foil of the Descent Stage is just that - black. However on the surface of the Moon it looks a light to mid grey (and there are a lot of extreme closeups taken on the J-series of missions) and it doesn't just look like washed out black - these are properly exposed images.
Keith
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My hearty congratulations to all Chinese who're involved in this wonderful mission. ESA too. I loved the content of both threads (quality time!), so many thanks for the invaluable contribution.
Please keep all those videos and photos coming 8)
Last but not least: Chang'e baby stay healthy and safe! Good luck to your historical mission :)
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I wonder when (if?) we are going to see the further four photos of the lander that Yutu was supposed to take over the past 20 hours...
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Xinhua reports that scientific equipment has been turned on now (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-12/16/c_132972788.htm) without much details.
Yutu's radar started working Sunday night to test the structure of lunar soil, according to Zou.
"Chang'e-3 will study the Moon's landforms, geological structure, substance, and potentially exploitable resources," he said, adding, "the lander will observe the Earth's plasmasphere through telescopes."
I like how often they keep bringing up exploiting resources. They talked about it at length yesterday in the CCTV live cast too. Hopefully the concept will become a globally understood idea.
Another observation, "Moon" and Chang'e have stayed as the 3-5th top story in the global news throughout the weekend.
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Regarding the reason for the rover's HGA being on the mast: I'm pretty sure that the mast folds back down onto the body and one of the solar panels folds back over the mast during noon and night for thermal protection. (I've seen this in animations but can't recall seeing it described thus in print, so I'd welcome corroboration or denial.) This is only speculation, but: having HGA on the mast means you only have one thing you need to fold down into the body for thermal protection to work, a simpler design than having several foldable/deployable things.
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Congratulations, China, and well deserved! Now go for a manned mission to the Moon; it's the only way NASA's getting a budget increase! :)
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The lunar surface actually shows a range of subtle colours depending on phase angle and composition. Different parental rocks have different tones of grey, and lunar volcanic and impact glasses can be grown, green, or orange.
Only when you are relatively close up. The general view of the surface from any distance is grey. Not a chocolate brown as in these photos. Did you look at any of the surface photos on the link I posted?
Yes, and thousands of others.
Certainly the Moon is overall greyish, but there are subtle (and occasionally not so subtle) colour differences due to composition, texture and phase angle. Even a very modest stretch will bring these out, even in photos of the Moon through a small telescope. Astronauts also referred to seeing these.
During Apollo the only photos generally available to the public were in mainsteam magazines (Time, Life, Newsweek, Paris Match) and due to print quality in these days, the lunar surface ranged from green through brown. You now have access to these same photos in sites like Kipp Teague's and can see the true colour quality in the properly processed images from the original films.
These photos we are seeing now remind me very much of the magazine photos in the 60's. I don't know what type or quality of cameras are aboard and it may be that these are just RAW images which need further processing.
I was reminded much the same
However the Chinese are not noted for releasing high res imagery
It's a bit early to be making such criticisms. I am sure we will see plenty of good images in the months to come.
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However the Chinese are not noted for releasing high res imagery
It's a bit early to be making such criticisms. I am sure we will see plenty of good images in the months to come.
It's also a false accusation. Chang'e-1 and Chang'e-2 full resolution imagery and scientific instrument data can be obtained from here
http://159.226.88.59:7779/CE1OutENGWeb/
This is the initial data release announcement
http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC-DPS2011/EPSC-DPS2011-995-1.pdf
For example see this paper using this data:
http://www.lsgi.polyu.edu.hk/staff/Bo.Wu/publications/Wu_2013_EPSL_Co-registration_of_lunar_topographic_models_derived_from_ChangE-1_SELENE_LRO.pdf
The Chang’E-1 data are currently publically available in Planetary Data System (PDS) format through the Lunar Exploration Data Release System (http://159.226.88.59:7779/CE1OutENGWeb/step.jsp).
http://paviavio.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/maybe-change-1-images-are-indeed-online/
According to the status report of data publishing, three international organizations among 50 institutes have provided data to this website. They are:
International Lunar Observatory (ILO) 2009.3.6
European Space Agency (ESA) 2009.5
Sternberg Astronomical Institute of Moscow State University 2010.3.31
And, officials have stated repeatedly that Chang'e-3 data will also be shared, presumably through similar means
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-12/14/c_132968313.htm
Space exploration is the cause of mankind, not just "the patent" of a certain country. China will share the achievements of its lunar exploration with the whole world and use them to benefit humanity.
It is learned that all data obtained by Chang'e-3 will be open to the whole world. China's lunar exploration provides an opportunity for countries dedicated to peaceful use of outer space to advance space technology together.
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Here are some snapshots taken during the descent about 30 or 15 seconds apart. The first shot shows the major features seen, Montes Recti (stop sniggling at the back there), craters Lapace F and Laplace FA, and the dark and light mare areas. Chang'e 3 landed in the dark mare. I've shown this as a red + in each image. During the turn in the latter images, the landing area disappears from view, so I've used other coloured +'s so as to track what you are seeing. In image 15, the + is over a white area, which is dust being stirred up by the engine. The next image shows the white area gone, due to the engine being turned off. I presume the dust seen just before final touchdown is due to the engine being briefly turned on to soften the impact of landing.
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Congratulations, China, and well deserved! Now go for a manned mission to the Moon; it's the only way NASA's getting a budget increase! :)
NASA budget $35 Billion for 2013-14 is more than entire BRIC + Japan!
Unlike the ISS (without too much $-burden on one nation), I'm confident that few nations genuinely participate in the future Planetary and Deep space missions...
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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. ???
When we say colour calibration... what exactly are we going for? To mimic how something will look to the human eye? How is that objective? Also, apart from sensor drift, and different electronic noise etc. - what optical difference exists between the Earth and the moon environment that requires re-calibration once on the moon? A moonwalker would also face these different optical conditions (outside of his helmet i.e.) too .... so are we really calibrating, or distorting?
The difference between Earth and the Moon is that the light curves are significantly shifted by the filtering of the atmosphere. What is "white" on Earth under natural light would not be white under direct unfiltered sunlight.
Yeah... that's all fine.. but what I'm asking is: on what basis do we claim that the image carries more scientific information if it's colour corrected to "look like it would on Earth"
Think of it like this: All you need for the science is intensity information vs wavelength - ideally a continuous spectrum, but we'll take the usual 3 discrete channels. The science doesn't care whether that information is represented in one composite image (of all three channels) or whether it's three separate grayscale images in each of the RGB channels.
So, really - you're only combining the channels for the aesthetic qualities. Which now begs the question - why would you manipulate the image to look as if it will look on Earth? A human being on the lunar surface, would also notice that the colours are different on the moon. I would've thought you'd WANT that. If you want the image to convey that it was taken on the moon - then you'd leave it as it is...
The "weirdness" of the images, IMO, is the reason for the "surprisingly large amount" of attention this landing, and the pictures are getting. There's a stark contrast between a black sky and the brightly lit foreground ... and it screams "SPACE!"
The pictures from Mars - with the atmosphere, and softer contrast - look like Peter Jackson found a sepia lens, and another virgin part of New Zealand.
EDIT: Also, thinking about it now..the atmospheric distortion of the intensity spectrum can be estimated fairly easily by taking an image of the same target from different distances (differing amounts of scattering in the images) - provided that the FOV is the same, and the incident light has the same characteristics (so two images in rapid succession, or two images at the same time of day). Apply different models of scattering to determine which one replicates the data - and you now also have information about the atmosphere...
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I found an image showing how sample returner will probably be designed: just a "payload change" and a robotic arm added (maybe the lander already is equipped with a "slot" where to mount it):
http://bbs.9ifly.cn/data/attachment/forum/month_1101/1101031102466ce5de6bac2abd.jpg
http://bbs.9ifly.cn/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=4587&pid=103735&fromuid=27122
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Actually, the common descent stage was obvious from what the first concepts of the Chang'e 3 lander and Chang'e 5 sample-return mission were published. What is missing from the above is the Earth return stage which remains in selenocentric orbit.
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Here are some snapshots taken during the descent about 30 or 15 seconds apart.
Nice work.
Are you able to put into just one image a scale showing size of a crater or distance between two craters?
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Here are some snapshots taken during the descent about 30 or 15 seconds apart.
Nice work.
Are you able to put into just one image a scale showing size of a crater or distance between two craters?
Returning just a rock or sand to Earth souldn't be that difficult: place it inside a small box with kevlar walls 5 cm thick, placed in the ascent module, use the ascent module itself to go back to Earth in all the time you need (1 week, 1 month, 1 year...), make it just fall down into the atmosphere , approximately calculating where it will finally impact on ground (Chinese desert ? Low depth area of Ocean?).
The kevlar box will arrive to ground with just 1 cm kevlar thickness remaining, it will dig up a 10 meters crater, but you will be still able to recover samples...
I suppose Chang'e3 lander is already designed for manned missions, so it should also be able to carry a descent module powerful (and then heavy) enough to also be used as a re-entry module.
Too simple? ::)
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Here are some snapshots taken during the descent about 30 or 15 seconds apart.
Nice work.
Thanks.
Are you able to put into just one image a scale showing size of a crater or distance between two craters?
That's a bit difficult, but Laplace F is 6 km in diameter. You can download a nice map of the region from
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/mapcatalog/LAC/lac24/
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Here are some snapshots taken during the descent about 30 or 15 seconds apart.
Nice work.
Are you able to put into just one image a scale showing size of a crater or distance between two craters?
Looking at Google Moon (http://www.google.com/moon) and using the Charts feature to identify the craters, the distance between the respective centers of Laplace A and Laplace FA in the first picture is about 24 miles (38 km).
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Yeah... that's all fine.. but what I'm asking is: on what basis do we claim that the image carries more scientific information if it's colour corrected to "look like it would on Earth"
Don't think we are talking about colour correcting the images to look like on Earth. If anything the colour correction might be needed if the cameras were calibrated for Earth but might need correcting once on the Moon. As I said previously all the Apollo Hasselblad imagery shows a predominately grey landscape and these were not colour corrected to look as if it were under an Earth sky.
However to answer your other question about why, NASA colour corrects the curiousity photos just that way so that scientists can make out geological information easier (see quote below).
"The image has been white-balanced to show what the rocks would look like if ther were on Earth."
Personally I wish they would release the proper Mars environment coloured images as I much prefer seeing what Mars actually looks like. They used to publish both, but I see they have stopped that and only releasing the colour corrected version (you can still access the original RAW but a lot of work to stitch them all together).
Keith
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Personally I wish they would release the proper Mars environment coloured images as I much prefer seeing what Mars actually looks like.
Have you ever, for example, taken a digital image of an outdoor scene under overcast skies while your camera white balance setting was left on normal daylight and noticed it looks nothing like what your eyes see?
There is no single "actually looks like", your eye does way more white balancing than you might realize. In a sense, both NASA versions are right in some way and both are also wrong. I suspect the actual appearance to a human eye would be somewhere in between the two versions. Closer to which one? I don't know.
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Have you ever, for example, taken a digital image of an outdoor scene under overcast skies while your camera white balance setting was left on normal daylight and noticed it looks nothing like what your eyes see?
Err, yes, I'm a photographer! :)
Not talking about such extremes of white balance - which are caused by incorrect white balance settings.
Early morning tends to have blue light on earth and late evening light tends towards the red, which you are correct the camera will pick up and which the eyes /brain might not. However there is only so much correcting the eyes/brain do. The colour you see comes purely from reflected light from objects. If in the case of Mars everything is of a red hue then that is what the light coming into your eyes sees. Similar to some indoor yellow lighting as in sports halls. You can never get a properly white balanced photo as there is no blue in the output from the bulbs. All the light being output is at the sodium end of the spectrum. Try working in a photo studio under a red light (in the old days when film was used) and your eyes/brain certainly can't handle this. Mars lighting conditions, whilst no where near so dramatic is similar.
However NASA learned during the Viking missions that they were tending to process too much to the blue and as the Martian dust tends to give a red atmosphere rather than the Earth's blue, they had to re-correct the images so the sky was more salmon tinted. As NASA states they have deliberately changed the colouring of the latest images for scientific reasons. They admit this is not how Mars looks under its conditions. Look at the RAW images before alteration and you will see a very different colouring - albeit perhaps a bit too rich.
However we are getting way off topic here, so apologies for going off on a tangent.
Keith
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However there is only so much correcting the eyes/brain do.
Agree, that's why I said the most accurate representation would probably be somewhere between the two versions NASA produces. The eye would certainly pick up that the general tone of the scene was reddish, but if there are any gray rocks, they should look fairly gray to the eye. I don't think Mars color is as bad as an incandescent light, the vast majority of the light coming down is still unfiltered sunlight, I'm not sure if the diffuse skylight is as bright as on Earth.
Look at the RAW images before alteration and you will see a very different colouring - albeit perhaps a bit too rich.
AIUI, raw images from MSL Mastcam that are posted on the web are uncalibrated, they weren't corrected for things like optics transmission function and quantum efficiency so should not be considered a good reference. That's probably a reason why they tend to be more on the greenish side.
To get back to Chang'e, I'm not that surprised the moon turned out brown. Every time I worked with spacecraft color imagery of the Moon, if I white-balanced it to the solar spectrum in vacuum, I got a similar brown color, whereas things like ice would turn out white. Same for Mercury.
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ok I been waiting for 3 days now, I have seen about 2 or 3 photos and a 6 minute landing movie put together from stills. Where is the direct video feed and they money shots of the Earth, etc. Things are too quiet now, let's spice it up a little. Otherwise people just going to get bored and forget the whole thing. Why isn't there a website with direct webcam from the rover :P
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Actually, the common descent stage was obvious from what the first concepts of the Chang'e 3 lander and Chang'e 5 sample-return mission were published. What is missing from the above is the Earth return stage which remains in selenocentric orbit.
There is a very crude illustration of the entire stack that was presented in a paper. The stack is pretty big. plutonogo may be able to post it.
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http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjQ4OTUzMjY0.html
From 9ifly
http://bbs.9ifly.cn/thread-12967-1-1.html
Sorry, newbie here, don't know how to post a vid. :-[
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Thanks to Steven Pietrobon and to this site http://target.lroc.asu.edu/q3/?mv=eqc&mcx=111055.01204&mcy=792434.77158&mz=16&ml=FTFB00TT# I was able to setup a Google Sketchup 3d model of Chang'e 3 landing site.
http://win98.altervista.org/change3-google-earth.zip
(Please don't embed huge images. Attach them please - Chris).
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To get back to Chang'e, I'm not that surprised the moon turned out brown. Every time I worked with spacecraft color imagery of the Moon, if I white-balanced it to the solar spectrum in vacuum, I got a similar brown color, whereas things like ice would turn out white. Same for Mercury.
To be honest not quite sure how you arrived at that as it doesn't gel with Apollo Hasselblad images.
I've tried to colour correct what I think is closer - and I must stress - purely my interpretation of the photos. You will see from the lander photo, that space is a lot blacker instead of a murky brown.
Keith
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To get back to Chang'e, I'm not that surprised the moon turned out brown. Every time I worked with spacecraft color imagery of the Moon, if I white-balanced it to the solar spectrum in vacuum, I got a similar brown color, whereas things like ice would turn out white. Same for Mercury.
To be honest not quite sure how you arrived at that as it doesn't gel with Apollo Hasselblad images.
It's just the way it is when using calibrated reflectance (I/F) data. The Moon invariably appears more reflective in the red end of the spectrum than in the blue end. If it was equally reflective, a RGB composite of such I/F data would end up perfectly grey (and it does do so for some Saturnian icy moons). I know this is at odds with how the moon appears to our eyes on the ground, but that's the end result when you put in a "hard" limit on the white balance, in this case completely dividing out the Sun's visible spectrum and don't do any other tweaks like a human eye probably would. I suspect Chang'e 3 cameras are operating in this mode. Hence why I said I wasn't very surprised at the outcome.
Here's one example of what the Moon looked like to the Deep Impact spacecraft while transiting Earth's disc: http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6143/5927214387_6f0e61e39f_o.gif
Images of the Moon taken from ISS also often show such a pale brown color, although I don't know the specific camera white balance settings used. I can't speak for Apollo Hasselblad photography other than it looks spectacular.
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There is a very crude illustration of the entire stack that was presented in a paper. The stack is pretty big. plutonogo may be able to post it.
I think you are referring to the one posted here
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=33431.0;attach=562163;image
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Calibrating true colors should be much easier on the Moon rather than on Mars: on Mars the red sky prevents from proper calibration, but on the Moon there is just a perfect-dark sky, and during Earth-night there's a minimal light contribution from Earth itself.
So it's just a matter of taking a snapshot of a white surface during Earth night, and you're done.
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U
Thanks to Steven Pietrobon and to this site http://target.lroc.asu.edu/q3/?mv=eqc&mcx=111055.01204&mcy=792434.77158&mz=16&ml=FTFB00TT# I was able to setup a Google Sketchup 3d model of Chang'e 3 landing site.
http://win98.altervista.org/change3-google-earth.zip
(Please don't embed huge images. Attach them please - Chris).
Updated verison of just KMZ file (some images were slightly misaligned):
http://win98.altervista.org/Chang_e_3_landing_site-2.kmz
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Damn, the landing footage watched while listening Strauss's Danubio Blu is just amazing! :-)
Is anybody able to upload a short version of the video which includes this song? You've just to make moment 04:30 of the song match with the touch down and you're done! :-)
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To get back to Chang'e, I'm not that surprised the moon turned out brown. Every time I worked with spacecraft color imagery of the Moon, if I white-balanced it to the solar spectrum in vacuum, I got a similar brown color, whereas things like ice would turn out white. Same for Mercury.
I don't understand what's going on there. I have always read that, in bulk, the Moon is a very dark grey - similar to a tarmac road surface. More technically, I am sure that I have read that the Moon's spectral curve is extremely similar to the Sun's - which is, of course, saying the same thing, and which wouldn't be possible if it had a bulk brown colour. (So much so, that I think Hubble has imaged the Moon as a calibration target for other planetary bodies, because it can't image the Sun. Somebody here probably knows that, one way or the other...)
That's not to say that individual areas of the Moon don't differ slightly from grey - I have seen highly Photoshopped amateur images that bring out colour differences ranging from blue to brown. but those were highly processed with the specific intention of bringing out slight colour differences.
On a personal, anecdotal, level, a few years ago I photographed the Taj Mahal by the light of a full Moon. When I got back home and loaded the images up into Lightroom, I found that simply "overexposing" the images produced an excellent rendering of the scene as it appeared the following day in daylight... (Camera on daylight balance in both cases.) I wished I hadn't done it, because it rather shattered the magic of the scene... :(
Nick
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Look up at the full moon tonight - is it brown?
Color is too complicated to trust any rendition of it. I just set image mode to Grayscale when I want it to look right.
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http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjQ4OTUzMjY0.html
From 9ifly
http://bbs.9ifly.cn/thread-12967-1-1.html
Sorry, newbie here, don't know how to post a vid. :-[
No problem. The links are fine. And welcome to the forum. :)
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Here's one example of what the Moon looked like to the Deep Impact spacecraft while transiting Earth's disc: http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6143/5927214387_6f0e61e39f_o.gif (http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6143/5927214387_6f0e61e39f_o.gif)
Wow.. you can really make out the highlands on the far side of the moon. There's a bright part in the centre of the lunar disc (when it's near/past the terminator on the Earth) interrupting what should've been a smooth continuation of the lunar terminator..
Split the gif into individual frames (I used ezgif.com/split) to illustrate that..
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Wow.. you can really make out the highlands on the far side of the moon.
Don't read anything into that, those are ringing artifacts due to the deconvolution process. The high resolution imager on the spacecraft had a design flaw similar to Hubble's mirror that caused all the images to be very blurred. This sequence had processing applied to at least partially recover from the blurring, the ringing is the side-effect.
Split the gif into individual frames (I used ezgif.com/split) to illustrate that..
Don't need to split it, I made that particular gif...
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I have a question. I tried to find the answer in the zillions of post about Chang'e 3 landing but got lost. Sorry if I am, as I'm quite sure, repeating someone else comment...
The lander was expected to shut down the engine 4 meters about the ground and then to the ground (see for example this page (http://www.spaceflight101.com/change-3.html)).
But the movie seems to show the lander touching down and leaving the engine ON for about 10 more long seconds. What happened?
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A symposium between some press and scientists involved in Chang'e 3 was held today (17th Dec) between 6.00am and 8.00am (UTC) in Beijing. Here're some of the dialogues: (sorry for my poor translation, I'm not very familiar with the aerospace jargons :( )
He ZHANG (Deputy chief designer of Chang'e 3, mainly responsible for the landing system): Chang'e 3 is working well, everything is functioning well, moon-besed EUV imaging started working.
Press: Has Yutu avoided the crater ahead?
He ZHANG: After seeing that crater, we felt very lucky as well as successful. Apart from the crater, there are some stones around as well. However the landing spot is very flat. It means our system worked well. The crater is bout 10m away, Yutu should be able to avoid it.
Yan SU (National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences): 6 of 8 instruments have been functioning. They are Descent Camera, MastCam, Lunar-based Ultraviolet Telescope (LUT), Ground Penetration Radar (GPM), PanCam, Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUV).
Press: When can we explore the Mars?
Weiren WU (Chief designer of Lunar project): We're capable of exploring the Mars already. However, when we're going to do it will be decided by the state.
Yan SU (Ground application system, National Astronomical Observatories): We will release sharing data at the earliest possible time.We have been cooperating with ESA, however it's difficult to cooperate with NASA because of its policy.
Weiren WU: The data will be classified as 4 levels. U.S. Congress forbids NASA cooperating with CNSA. NASA had asked Chang'e's trajectory data before the launch, however they refused to provide the trajectory data of their own orbiters.
Press: Aprat from ESA and NASA, do we cooperate with Russia, India, Japan and South American countries?
Weiren WU: We work with ESA, but not NASA. We also have some cooperation with Russia. To work with others, we always need to improve ourselves.
Press: What if Chang'e 3 failed?
Weiren WU: We tried our best, but we also prepared the worst. We had more than 200 troubleshooting plans. But in the end, none of them was used. We would be under immense pressure if it failed, however we believed Chinese people would understand.
He ZHANG: Both USA and former USSR had some failures. However we have the benefit of much improved technology. We used laser rangefinder, 3D laser imaging sensor. They didn't have them in 1960s and 1970s. The main feature of the landing is autonomous obstacle avoidance. There was a carter, 20m diameter, 2 or 3 metres deep. Chang'e 3 successfully avoided it. Chang'e 3 could take three 3D photos, however it wasn't too difficult, so it took only one 3D photo. The computer quickly identified the safe spot, Chang'e 3 panned a little, then landed.
Press: Chang'e 5 will be launched in 2017, will it take another rocket to bring the sample back?
He ZHANG: The rocket will be almost as twice powerful as Chang'e 3's (1000t vs 600t). Yes, there will be another "little rocket" to bring the sample back, although we don't called it as such. It's very difficult new technology. It's still under development.
Press: What are the further tasks for the lander?
He ZHANG: There's a moon-dust integrated load measuring instrument on the lander which will collect moon-dust for a year, so we can analyse the data coming from the lander. To work for a year, the lander has a RHU radioisotope thermoelectric heating system which can keep the temperature in the cabin to minus 30-40 degree during the night.
Press: Chang'e 3 has been such a success, what's the point to fly Chang'e 4?
Weiren WU: We will certainly make some alterations for Chang'e 4 to suit the purposes. We will need more discussion about it.
Press: Any major technical differences between Chang'e 5 and Chang'e 3?
Weiren WU: Lunar orbit rendezvous and docking, sample taking and drilling, sample packing and preservation, returning to the Earth.
Source:
http://210.14.113.38:9080/asop/login.asop?titleId=375
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But the movie seems to show the lander touching down and leaving the engine ON for about 10 more long seconds. What happened?
There was speculation earlier in the thread that although the engine was off, there was still some remaining gas escaping.
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A symposium between some press and scientists involved in Chang'e 3 was held today (17th Dec) between 6.00am and 8.00am (UTC) in Beijing. Here're some of the dialogues: (sorry for my poor translation, I'm not very familiar with the aerospace jargons :( )
I think it was a great translation! Thanks a lot, some nice information in there! :)
Overall they seem very humble and I hope for some NASA/CNSA cooperation in the future, as scientists on both sides seem to just want to work together. :)
Press: Any major technical differences between Chang'e 5 and Chang'e 3?
Weiren WU: Lunar orbit rendezvous and docking, sample taking and drilling, sample packing and preservation, returning to the Earth.
Drilling on Chang'e 5, awesome! :)
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Images of the Moon taken from ISS also often show such a pale brown color, although I don't know the specific camera white balance settings used. I can't speak for Apollo Hasselblad photography other than it looks spectacular.
Also both Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 12 crew reported the moon looked brown from certain angles and heights early in the lunar morning (for Apollo 12, on the second EVA). Neil said that when he held the lunar soil in his hand up close, it look gray. This was in an interview with Patrick Moore shortly after Apollo 12. The Apollo 10 crew reported brown many times from orbit at low sun levels.
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A symposium between some press and scientists involved in Chang'e 3 was held today (17th Dec) between 6.00am and 8.00am (UTC) in Beijing. Here're some of the dialogues: (sorry for my poor translation, I'm not very familiar with the aerospace jargons :( )
I think it was a great translation! Thanks a lot, some nice information in there! :)
Seconded, thank you very much. !
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Test of the reentry vehicle for CE-5.
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Weiren WU: We tried our best, but we also prepared the worst. We had more than 200 troubleshooting plans. But in the end, none of them was used. We would be under immense pressure if it failed, however we believed Chinese people would understand.
Thanks for sharing that interview. I liked this part very much, so good luck to Chinese team :)
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http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjQ4OTUzMjY0.html
From 9ifly
http://bbs.9ifly.cn/thread-12967-1-1.html
Thanks for posting that video. Some screen captures. The first showing a descent camera image with a drawing of Chang'e 3 and Yutu imposed on it, the second showing Chang'e 3 marked with a red cross I've added (that's a fairly big crater that it landed next to) and the last showing Chang'e 3 relative to Luna 17 which carried Lunokhod 1.
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Thanks for sharing that interview. I liked this part very much, so good luck to Chinese team :)
Another lengthy translation of the same briefing posted by Emily now:
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12172045-change-3-update.html
Data sharing with PDS as they did with Change-1 and 2 mentioned again too.
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I was looking at images of the Yutu rover and how the mockups compare to the real thing. I noticed that the wheels changed in design completely.
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I believe there were two competing rover designs. The one you showed could have been the losing design.
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To get back to Chang'e, I'm not that surprised the moon turned out brown. Every time I worked with spacecraft color imagery of the Moon, if I white-balanced it to the solar spectrum in vacuum, I got a similar brown color, whereas things like ice would turn out white. Same for Mercury.
To be honest not quite sure how you arrived at that as it doesn't gel with Apollo Hasselblad images.
It's just the way it is when using calibrated reflectance (I/F) data. The Moon invariably appears more reflective in the red end of the spectrum than in the blue end. If it was equally reflective, a RGB composite of such I/F data would end up perfectly grey (and it does do so for some Saturnian icy moons). I know this is at odds with how the moon appears to our eyes on the ground, but that's the end result when you put in a "hard" limit on the white balance, in this case completely dividing out the Sun's visible spectrum and don't do any other tweaks like a human eye probably would. I suspect Chang'e 3 cameras are operating in this mode. Hence why I said I wasn't very surprised at the outcome.
Here's one example of what the Moon looked like to the Deep Impact spacecraft while transiting Earth's disc: http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6143/5927214387_6f0e61e39f_o.gif (http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6143/5927214387_6f0e61e39f_o.gif)
Images of the Moon taken from ISS also often show such a pale brown color, although I don't know the specific camera white balance settings used. I can't speak for Apollo Hasselblad photography other than it looks spectacular.
Thanks for posting that link. I really love that video from Deep Impact.
However, the visible detectors in the Medium and High Resolution Imagers (MRI & HRI) on Deep Impact sat behind filter wheels. The filters were the Hale Bopp standard filter set. (see http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1997DPS....29.3213M (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1997DPS....29.3213M) "The new narrowband comet filter set, designated the "Hale-Bopp set'', consists of 11 filters: five that isolate gas emission bands (OH, NH, CN, C_3, and C_2), two for ions (CO(+) and H_2O(+) ) and four that isolate associated continuum bands") The DI PI, Dr. Michael A'Hearn, helped develop that set, which was used by astronomers around the world so that their data would all be easy to compare and to aid in retrieval of those chemical species. They were not selected to make aesthetically pleasing, natural color images. I believe that the movie was created from pairs or triplets of the images, color and exposure balanced to some degree.
Remember that the Bayer pattern filters on standard color imagers, particularly the red filter, have significant leakage and response to other colors. As objects shift around around the color chart odd responses can happen. I have not read enough to know if the rover and lander have color detectors or monochromatic detectors with filter wheels, or if filters, what bands were chosen.
The Chinese could have mounted a quantitatively verified white surface, like a ceramic tile, on protected locations on the rover and lander, for each other to image. They have certainly seen that on US Mars landers. They chose not to.
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I noticed that the wheels changed in design completely.
Jump to video 5:45 , they talk about elastic wheels
http://english.cntv.cn/program/newsupdate/20131215/104112.shtml
The alternative rover design that Steven refers to looked substantially different - the elastic wheels may have been a late addition to the winning design.
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Why have my post containing example of color optical illusions been deleted?!? It was on topic!
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I'm amused to see today's APOD (19 Dec): http://www.star.ucl.ac.uk/~apod/apod/ap131219.html (http://www.star.ucl.ac.uk/~apod/apod/ap131219.html)
Do you think someone on the APOD team has been reading our discussion on the colour of the Moon??
:) :)
Nick
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Another lengthy translation of the same briefing posted by Emily now:
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12172045-change-3-update.html (http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12172045-change-3-update.html)
Data sharing with PDS as they did with Change-1 and 2 mentioned again too.
Excellent, thanks again.
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I created a Google Earth simulation of the landing which includes known objects allowing figuring out image scale.
I'm currently trying upoloading it somewhere, in the meantime you can look at some screenshots.
You will find link to video (when available) in my blog page here:
http://jumpjack.wordpress.com/2013/12/20/animazione-google-earth-allunaggio-sonda-chinese-change-3-del-14-dicembre-2013/
Google Earth animation is not perfectly syncronized to real footage as I had to do all by hand to zoom, move and rotate Google Earth view; it's not easy... it's quite like a videogame! :-) You can try it by yourself running the animation in Google Earth while looking at the video:
http://win98.altervista.org/Chang_e_3_landing_site-new.kmz
If you get better result I'll be glad to replace my video by yours.
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About the "colors of the moon", I attach some images explaining how our brain is easily "cheated" and can't actually know which the "true colors" are
Single cube:
the center rectangle of front and top side are exactly same color: verify using your favourite image editor.
Two cubes:
"Blue" boxes of top side of left cube are exactly same color of "yellow" boxes of top side of right cube!
Moon:
same images of the moon appear different depending on background colors!
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Chang'e 3's landing site panorama released! (Chinese news report (http://news.cntv.cn/2013/12/20/VIDE1387538287920838.shtml))
(or not, because I'm still trying to find that photo on the Internet..... ::))
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Chang'e 3's landing site panorama released! (Chinese news report (http://news.cntv.cn/2013/12/20/VIDE1387538287920838.shtml))
(or not, because I'm still trying to find that photo on the Internet..... ::))
Try this:
http://v.qq.com/cover/c/ctklokz7zk0a9y3.html?vid=f0013ghuxv8&start=31
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jaw dropping!
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Looks lovely, but I have to say it's really beginning to make me crazy that the "release" is a video camera panning around a television monitor.
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Chang'e 3's landing site panorama released! (Chinese news report (http://news.cntv.cn/2013/12/20/VIDE1387538287920838.shtml))
(or not, because I'm still trying to find that photo on the Internet..... ::))
Try this:
http://v.qq.com/cover/c/ctklokz7zk0a9y3.html?vid=f0013ghuxv8&start=31
The Chinese advert for Pizza Hut got a laugh when I put that video up on the big screen here. Then a sigh, seen as we're not going back there.
The moon, that is. Not Pizza hut!
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The Chinese advert for Pizza Hut got a laugh when I put that video up on the big screen here. Then a sigh, seen as we're not going back there.
And why does it look like their Pizza Hut serves much better food than our Pizza Hut?
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with all due respect, and just before the conversation will be trimmed as OT:
keep designing those wonderful launch vehicles, US companies, but leave pizza (and a few more things like beautiful sport cars) to the Italians - thanks :)
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Looks lovely, but I have to say it's really beginning to make me crazy that the "release" is a video camera panning around a television monitor.
Doesn't surprise me in the least.
It as it is nigh on impossible to get any stills, never mind hi res images about the Chinese space programe. Never seen a single image of Tiangong (apart from TV) in orbit for instance.
Keith
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Looks lovely, but I have to say it's really beginning to make me crazy that the "release" is a video camera panning around a television monitor.
I think you need to watch this again
http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/fsustavros/clips/louis-ck-technology
Focus on the part where he says "will you give it a second?!! Its going through space!!"
In short, the releases will be out in due time, they need to doctor out the alien bases first.
For Chang'e-1 i think it took them about three years to open http://moon.bao.ac.cn/ , and Chang'e-2 was quite a bit quicker.
EDIT: added this - :D
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It's said in the Chinese media that Yutu has been brought out of sleep earlier than planned because of the favourable condition and started working again.
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Looks lovely, but I have to say it's really beginning to make me crazy that the "release" is a video camera panning around a television monitor.
I think you need to watch this again
http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/fsustavros/clips/louis-ck-technology
Focus on the part where he says "will you give it a second?!! Its going through space!!"
Aah.. a Louis CK clip I hadn't watched. Brilliant as usual :D
Reminds me of the piece the Onion did on Apollo 11...
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Chang'e 3 landing with THE soundtrack :) and with size of craters "explained" through Google Earth simulation:
http://youtu.be/KKjqYDULeaA
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China's Yutu "naps", awakens and explores
English.news.cn 2013-12-20 23:30:45
BEIJING, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- China's moon rover, Yutu (Jade Rabbit), continued exploring after a "nap", according to the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence on Friday.
At about 8:00 p.m. Beijing Time, the six-wheeled rover started moving again after shutting down its subsystems on Dec. 16.
Yutu has had to deal with direct solar radiation raising the temperature to over 100 degrees centigrade on his sunny side, while his shaded side simultaneously fell below zero.
"The break had been planned to last until Dec. 23, but the scientists decided to restart Yutu now for more research time, based on the recent observations and telemetry parameters," said Pei Zhaoyu, spokesman for the lunar program.
Yutu separated from the lander on Dec. 15, several hours after Chang'e-3 soft-landed on Dec. 14. It moved to a spot about 9 meters to the north where Yutu and the lander took photos of each other.
Yutu will survey the moon's geological structure and surface substances and look for natural resources for three months, while the lander will conduct in-situ exploration at the landing site for one year.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-12/20/c_125893854.htm
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Panorama (credit: Phil Stooke)
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Resolution is even worse than Pathfinder 1997 first panorama! :-(
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China's Yutu "naps", awakens and explores
English.news.cn 2013-12-20 23:30:45
BEIJING, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- China's moon rover, Yutu (Jade Rabbit), continued exploring after a "nap", according to the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence on Friday.
At about 8:00 p.m. Beijing Time, the six-wheeled rover started moving again after shutting down its subsystems on Dec. 16.
Yutu has had to deal with direct solar radiation raising the temperature to over 100 degrees centigrade on his sunny side, while his shaded side simultaneously fell below zero.
A nap in the heat of the midday Sun? Shouldn't we call that a siesta? :-)
Cheers, Martin
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More about Autonomous Obstacle Avoidance
When Change'e 3 stopped at 100m from the surface. She had fuel to make 3 adjustments in 30 seconds. She can observe a field about half a football pitch, having the capability of identifying rocks and craters as small as 20cm. It took her 0.25 second to take a 3D laser photo and 3 seconds to find the acceptable landing spot or take another photo. She did so once, found the landing spot, moved over and landed.
Source:
http://www.infzm.com/content/96828
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http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12201542-change-3-and-ladee-updates.html (http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12201542-change-3-and-ladee-updates.html)
The Neutral Mass Spectrometer (NMS) was running in a mode that would allow it to monitor native lunar atmospheric species, as well as those resulting from Chang'e 3's propulsion system. These combustion products were known to include diatomic nitrogen, water, diatomic hydrogen and several other species.
Combustion products including diatomic Nitrogen and diatomic hydrogen?? What propellant yields these species as exhaust?
He goes on to state that preliminary analysis didn't detect anything (no changes from usual lunar atmosphere). But AIUI, they were looking for these traces at the landing site... which, given the different orbital trajectories was pretty far away.
I thought they'd try to track the exhaust products from the de-orbit burn, as opposed to the terminal descent. The longer length of the burn - both spatially and temporally... and the fact that those products would've also been orbital - at a height above most of the moon's exosphere... and definitely closer to LADEE. I don't know if they did this as well, or were concentrating only on the landing site..
Any ideas?
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http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12201542-change-3-and-ladee-updates.html (http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12201542-change-3-and-ladee-updates.html)
The Neutral Mass Spectrometer (NMS) was running in a mode that would allow it to monitor native lunar atmospheric species, as well as those resulting from Chang'e 3's propulsion system. These combustion products were known to include diatomic nitrogen, water, diatomic hydrogen and several other species.
Combustion products including diatomic Nitrogen and diatomic hydrogen?? What propellant yields these species as exhaust?
Hydrazine.
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http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12201542-change-3-and-ladee-updates.html (http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12201542-change-3-and-ladee-updates.html)
The Neutral Mass Spectrometer (NMS) was running in a mode that would allow it to monitor native lunar atmospheric species, as well as those resulting from Chang'e 3's propulsion system. These combustion products were known to include diatomic nitrogen, water, diatomic hydrogen and several other species.
Combustion products including diatomic Nitrogen and diatomic hydrogen?? What propellant yields these species as exhaust?
Hydrazine.
That's for a mono-prop configuration. Don't tell me the 7.5kN engine is a monoprop engine..
EDIT: OK.. some basic wikipedia crawling tells me that mono-prop hydrazine engines ARE in fact, used for terminal descent engines.
#TIL
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"Resolution is even worse than Pathfinder 1997 first panorama! :-("
No, it's better. The original is much better. We don't have that yet, but we will. Meanwhile, reflect on the work that went into creating the miserable version of the pan you have before you now. (Merry Christmas!)
Phil
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"Resolution is even worse than Pathfinder 1997 first panorama! :-("
No, it's better. The original is much better. We don't have that yet, but we will. Meanwhile, reflect on the work that went into creating the miserable version of the pan you have before you now. (Merry Christmas!)
Phil
Thanks for this. Can you tell us how it was created from what the Chinese have made available?
Will
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"Resolution is even worse than Pathfinder 1997 first panorama! :-("
No, it's better. The original is much better.
I'm sure it is. As it is the descent video, shot at 1024x1024 pixel (while the "HD" video on youtube has just a bunch of pixels). But it has not yet been released... and it does not look like it will ever be. :-( Not until Chang'e 4 at least. :-(
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Looks lovely, but I have to say it's really beginning to make me crazy that the "release" is a video camera panning around a television monitor.
Doesn't surprise me in the least.
It as it is nigh on impossible to get any stills, never mind hi res images about the Chinese space programe. Never seen a single image of Tiangong (apart from TV) in orbit for instance.
Keith
It's almost as though they aren't entirely comfortable with freedom of information, for some reason. How different, how very different is the information policy of our own dear NASA!
Will
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It's almost as though they aren't entirely comfortable with freedom of information, for some reason.
They have different processes for publishing the data, slower than some NASA missions but not unheard of. They do publish the data, carefully and meticulously.
Maybe they ALSO have a bunch of important PhDs with first dibs to get their papers published ?
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t = ton
Shouldn't that be "t = tonne"
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t = ton
Shouldn't that be "t = tonne"
Not if Jason1701 means 2000 pounds in US Customary Units or 2,240 pounds in Imperial Units.
If Jason1701 means 1000 kg, then it should be tonne.
Life would be easier if my fellow Americans let go of tradition and switched to the metric system.
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Yutu is on the move again! On December 21 she made 21 meters from the B waypoint through C to D, probably resting to the south of the lander.
新华网北京12月21日电
截至12月21日20时05分,在北京航天飞行控制中心的遥操作控制下,“玉兔”号月球车顺利由B点行驶至C点和D点,行程约21米,在C点和D点均进行了全景相像、导航相机等图像成像和下传工作。北京中心根据实时传回的遥测数据分析判断,着陆器、月球车各分系统工作正常稳定。
Google translation:
Xinhua Beijing December 21
As at 20:05 on December 21, in the remote operation control Beijing Aerospace Control Center, "rabbit" was the lunar rover successfully traveling from point B to point C and D, travel about 21 meters, at point C and D were carried out panorama likeness, image cameras and other imaging and navigation downstream work. Beijing center according to the real-time telemetry data returned by analysis and judgment, lander, the rover subsystems working properly stabilized.
Seems to be a new image:
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Seems to be a new image:
Seems like framegrab from the video in here
http://www.chinanews.com/gn/2013/12-21/5647870.shtml
There is also a top view of the landing area and presumably the rovers traverse
http://news.sohu.com/20131221/n392176417.shtml
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It's almost as though they aren't entirely comfortable with freedom of information, for some reason.
They have different processes for publishing the data, slower than some NASA missions but not unheard of. They do publish the data, carefully and meticulously.
What I don't understand is: once they've sent data to national TV which also airs over internet, what else do they need to wait to release raw data?!?
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Seems like framegrab from the video in here
http://www.chinanews.com/gn/2013/12-21/5647870.shtml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weF7JPXOr9s
From Youtube above but it's probably the same news item.
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What I don't understand is: once they've sent data to national TV which also airs over internet, what else do they need to wait to release raw data?!?
It doesnt look like CCTV / CNTV are getting any "data" apart from carefully prepared video at this point, hence everything that gets posted anywhere are blurry video frame grabs like these
http://news.cntv.cn/2013/12/21/PHOA1387590503017494.shtml#g=1
These clips are just plain video frame stills from the video they used in this report
http://english.cntv.cn/program/china24/20131221/104383.shtml
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It's almost as though they aren't entirely comfortable with freedom of information, for some reason.
They have different processes for publishing the data, slower than some NASA missions but not unheard of. They do publish the data, carefully and meticulously.
What I don't understand is: once they've sent data to national TV which also airs over internet, what else do they need to wait to release raw data?!?
Obviously for the same reason you're not satisfied with the TV grab, and are craving the raw images.
I wouldn't be surprised if some science communication / media organisation in China had access to the high-res versions first - (for a yet-to-be-aired documentary perhaps?) similar to proprietary access periods for scientific data. After all, Mars One's basing their business plan on that. Maybe China wanted to do a pilot with Chang'E 3?
Anyway..let's stop whining over this.. please?
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It's almost as though they aren't entirely comfortable with freedom of information, for some reason.
They have different processes for publishing the data, slower than some NASA missions but not unheard of. They do publish the data, carefully and meticulously.
What I don't understand is: once they've sent data to national TV which also airs over internet, what else do they need to wait to release raw data?!?
From the look of it, CNSA didn't release any data to CCTV, instead, the later had the access to CNSA control room and reported what they saw on the big screen, obviously with the consent from CNSA.
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Anyway..let's stop whining over this.. please?
Not much whining to be fair. You should see some of the SLS (exploration plan - frustration with it) threads....as much as we moderate via the true meaning of moderation.
We will keep it calm on all threads, per the forum rules.
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It's almost as though they aren't entirely comfortable with freedom of information, for some reason.
They have different processes for publishing the data, slower than some NASA missions but not unheard of. They do publish the data, carefully and meticulously.
What I don't understand is: once they've sent data to national TV which also airs over internet, what else do they need to wait to release raw data?!?
Obviously for the same reason you're not satisfied with the TV grab, and are craving the raw images.
I wouldn't be surprised if some science communication / media organisation in China had access to the high-res versions first - (for a yet-to-be-aired documentary perhaps?) similar to proprietary access periods for scientific data. After all, Mars One's basing their business plan on that. Maybe China wanted to do a pilot with Chang'E 3?
Anyway..let's stop whining over this.. please?
Not whining, cobber. No huhu. Just saying that China is slow to share original data compared to NASA and ESA.
Will
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Not whining, cobber. No huhu. Just saying that China is slow to share original data compared to NASA and ESA.
I think this is quite understandable. They are still building up experience, they are not a democracy, they have to learn how to manage public outreach.
Scientists there are subject to scrutiny from the politicians and a single error may have quite strong impact on careers and funding. They have to learn step by step what you can do and when. They have had pretty big failures in the past and they may be scared by the possibility of a sudden failure live or of a misleading information given to the public.
Actually I'm amazed by seeing this coverage for this mission. Respect to the past it looks to me quite an improvement. Derivative matters, not absolute value.
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Finally, I think we have two photos not taken from the projection screen.
Source (http://china.cnr.cn/gdgg/201312/t20131222_514462502_1.shtml)
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Nice!
One Q springs to mind - is the rover able to operate independently, out of visual range from the lander?
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Two more interesting photos:
The lander one was captioned 'the first hot-fire test of chang'e 3 lander'.
Source (http://www.infzm.com/content/96828)
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Nice!
One Q springs to mind - is the rover able to operate independently, out of visual range from the lander?
Thanks to Emily Lakdawalla and her translation of a press briefing (http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12172045-change-3-update.html), seems like the rover can operate by itself.
Wu Weiren also talked about the rover having autonomous navigation capability. The Soviet Lunokhods required television monitors and continuous round-the-clock shifts of drivers to manually tele-operate them. Wu said that Yutu can be operated in this mode, but that there is also a "completely independent operation mode" in which it can be navigated to waypoints. It can avoid obstacles using both long- and near-distance stereo vision through navigational cameras on the mast and hazard avoidance cameras on the body, just like NASA's Mars rovers. "If a stone is too big, the rover will automatically turn, then go around it." [15:41]
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Nice!
One Q springs to mind - is the rover able to operate independently, out of visual range from the lander?
Thanks to Emily Lakdawalla and her translation of a press briefing (http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12172045-change-3-update.html), seems like the rover can operate by itself.
Wu Weiren also talked about the rover having autonomous navigation capability. The Soviet Lunokhods required television monitors and continuous round-the-clock shifts of drivers to manually tele-operate them. Wu said that Yutu can be operated in this mode, but that there is also a "completely independent operation mode" in which it can be navigated to waypoints. It can avoid obstacles using both long- and near-distance stereo vision through navigational cameras on the mast and hazard avoidance cameras on the body, just like NASA's Mars rovers. "If a stone is too big, the rover will automatically turn, then go around it." [15:41]
My question was not really related to navigation - it is more about communication ability. Can the rover operate independently of the lander on a long trek?
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My question was not really related to navigation - it is more about communication ability. Can the rover operate independently of the lander on a long trek?
The big HGA on the rover mast says yes ;)
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plus, IIRC there is a beyond-the-horizon radio link with the lander
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My question was not really related to navigation - it is more about communication ability. Can the rover operate independently of the lander on a long trek?
Did some digging, according to this report (http://it.gmw.cn/dzb/2013-12/13/content_2586307.htm) (sorry, in Chinese), the lander can relay data from Yutu, but both the rover and lander can communicate directly with Earth.
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plus, IIRC there is a beyond-the-horizon radio link with the lander
The moon has a beyond-the-horizon radio-comm facilitating ionosphere?
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Don't know if these have been posted:
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to the Chinese speakers: any new info?
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Not much new, apart from confirming the distance of each spot they took photos of each other. A - approx. 9 metres from the lander, B/C/D- approx. 10m, E - approx 18m. The big bold text reads: 5 spots, 5 angles.
Read a post from 9ifly, Mr Weiren Wu (chief desinger of Chang'e project) said on CCTV the instruments (or maybe he meant the vehicles) fared better than they expected in term of adapting the extremely high and low temperature. So he expected they should have a longer life span than original expected.
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plus, IIRC there is a beyond-the-horizon radio link with the lander
The moon has a beyond-the-horizon radio-comm facilitating ionosphere?
Apparently, the answer is not as obvious as you would think.
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20080046911
Long-range, over-the-horizon (transhorizon) radio wave propagation is considered for the case of the Moon. In the event that relay satellites are not available or otherwise unwarranted for use, transhorizon communication provides for a contingency or backup option for non line-of-sight lunar surface exploration scenarios. Two potential low-frequency propagation mechanisms characteristic of the lunar landscape are the lunar regolith and the photoelectron induced plasma exosphere enveloping the Moon
Google for "Path Loss Prediction Model of Radio Propagation over Lunar Surface"
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-25002-6_77#page-1
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20070025224_2007025210.pdf
Anyone want to bet that Chang'e/Yutu have 1Mhz tansceivers ?
EDIT: actually more likely, i would think they will have variable frequency transceivers and they'll run some surface radio propagation experiments across the likely frequency ranges.
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Not whining, cobber. No huhu. Just saying that China is slow to share original data compared to NASA and ESA.
I think this is quite understandable. They are still building up experience, they are not a democracy, they have to learn how to manage public outreach.
SNIP
Actually I'm amazed by seeing this coverage for this mission. Respect to the past it looks to me quite an improvement. Derivative matters, not absolute value.
It is worth comparing what we are seeing from China on their space efforts with what we saw from the Soviet Union during the Cold War. They almost never announced a launch, even a scientific launch, before it happened. And does anybody know of a Soviet-era launch that was shown live on television? In addition, the Soviets did not provide details about spacecraft or mission goals prior to launch, and often only released bits of information after the fact.
In contrast, China has been quite open about their human and science space programs (and very secretive about their military space programs). They regularly discuss at scientific conferences their upcoming plans. And of course the CE-3 launch and landing were both carried live on television. If they had failed, it would have been a public embarrassment to China.
But I think you pointed out two important facts:
A-they are not a democracy
B-they are still leaning about how to do this
NASA had long experience operating in the open and therefore it is now easier for them to be open than to conceal things. China doesn't have that experience, and they have an authoritarian government that doesn't reward openness and often punishes it (after all, they have people who censor the internet and international television).
But I have a question: they have said that they are going to put the CE-3 information into the Planetary Data System. Does that include imagery? If so, it may be possible to get high quality imagery out of the PDS even if the Chinese don't directly release it to the press.
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But I have a question: they have said that they are going to put the CE-3 information into the Planetary Data System. Does that include imagery? If so, it may be possible to get high quality imagery out of the PDS even if the Chinese don't directly release it to the press.
You are slightly misstating them. Existing CE-1 and CE-2 have been published in the same format as PDS uses, but they are not in NASA PDS, they have their own publishing system - Ground Research & Application System (GRAS)
And as stated above, yes they have high resolution imagery in their data releases.
See here http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC-DPS2011/EPSC-DPS2011-995-1.pdf
The format and naming convention of the CE-1/CE-2 data products follow the PDS ( The Planetary Data System ) standards issued by NASA. These ensure that, without knowing specific information about the payloads, the persons who have acquired data are able to use them directly and easily.
They have a tracker on their english site too showing numerous researchers across the world having obtained the data.
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A-they are not a democracy
B-they are still leaning about how to do this
Two very good points. I thought the coverage has been quite good, but one aspect they could improve on is providing a Press Kit. For western media I think it would be a big help in covering their future missions.
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A-they are not a democracy
B-they are still leaning about how to do this
Two very good points. I thought the coverage has been quite good, but one aspect they could improve on is providing a Press Kit. For western media I think it would be a big help in covering their future missions.
I think that's a good point. There was in fact a substantial amount of information on this mission prior to launch, but it was not clearly collected in a single place. A good thing for them to do would be to have a press kit in both Chinese (Mandarin? I admit my knowledge of the languages they use is skimpy) and English.
There is another aspect to this issue and that is what is government policy vs. their culture. They may not do things the way Westerners expect simply because that's a cultural issue, not part of their official policy or rules. A colleague who works with the Japanese space program a lot has told me that it is common in their culture to never provide a definitive "no." They will often hedge and be vague, and you either have to understand how to read what they are really saying, or go out for drinks with them afterwards and coax a real answer out of them. He said that there was a clear contrast during meetings between the Americans, who wanted to get clear yes/no answers and emerge with a clear agreement, and his Japanese counterparts, who were concerned with many other things, such as saving face or not offending their partners.
So, for instance, somebody suggested much earlier in this thread that China doesn't provide launch dates until very soon before the actual launch. Is that a government policy? Or is it a cultural thing, where they want to be absolutely positively sure of a launch date--and don't want to commit themselves--before they announce it?
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Yutu robot arm successfully deployed
link (in Chinese): http://www.chinanews.com/gn/2013/12-23/5653502.shtml
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And does anybody know of a Soviet-era launch that was shown live on television?
I believe I recall the launch of the Soyuz for the Apollo-Soyuz mission being televised live, but that was certainly an exception. Does anyone else remember that?
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Excellent coverage NSF, as always top notch info.
Question: Does anyone know if Dec 25/13 is stilll the 1st opportunity for LRO to picture the Chang'e-3's landing site"?
TIA
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I think this is the best quality image I've seen of the rover.
https://twitter.com/XHNews/status/414757536735047680/photo/1
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I believe I recall the launch of the Soyuz for the Apollo-Soyuz mission being televised live, but that was certainly an exception. Does anyone else remember that?
that was was surely shown on TV. one or both of the Vega launches were shown on TV.
edit: allow me to cite from my book "Robotic Exploration of the Solar System - Part 2":
In fact, this was also the first time that the main launch vehicle of the Soviet planetary and lunar programs, introduced into service in the late 1960s, was actually shown on Soviet television. Nevertheless, even although the Proton no longer had a military role, the coverage was not allowed to disclose the actual ascent trajectory or the times of staging.
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I think this is the best quality image I've seen of the rover.
The horizontal pixel size of 1024 suggests that it may, for once, be (a crop?) of an actual source image. Here's a quick white balance and an attempt to compensate for the apparent hue shift seen toward the left edge:
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Excellent. That's more like the colour I would expect the moon to be.
And yes that's a "real" photo and not either a video or copy of a screen image.
Keith
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http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20070025224_2007025210.pdf
Anyone want to bet that Chang'e/Yutu have 1Mhz tansceivers ?
EDIT: actually more likely, i would think they will have variable frequency transceivers and they'll run some surface radio propagation experiments across the likely frequency ranges.
Yup... definitely a scientific opportunity. I browsed through both those NTRS papers. As the second one says - the calculation of link budget, and margins for antenna power etc. don't account for Inter symbol-interference. So, as regards digital data - there's a lot of work still to be done. It also says that they applied their modified model on scaled Earth-analog data, derived from the SRTM because Clementine's resolution wasn't satisfactory. I wonder if they've now used LRO to generate predictions for the moon itself. This is something that the Chinese rover(s) could validate.
Would this count as "active co-operation" though? I know about Frank Wolf, but the law still hasn't changed has it?
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New footage of the rover in move (starts 0:25) [youtube]R9qhPWbwwhc[/youtube]
and Yutu from new angle
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Isn't LRO due to overfly it tomorrow?
Hopefully we'll get some images back from that.
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and Yutu from new angle
(http://photocdn.sohu.com/20131223/Img392264886.jpg)
Interesting that the high gain is pointed down. They must be using the imager to look close at the dirt in front of Yutu.
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and Yutu from new angle
Interesting that the high gain is pointed down. They must be using the imager to look close at the dirt in front of Yutu.
Fixing that high-gain antenna to the mast was a good idea. It makes the rover look like a baby that refuses to give up its pacifier to me :P
I suppose it's fitting, given that a functioning comm-link will work to pacify all the Chang'E 3 engineers too :D
Also, here's something I hadn't paid attention to, but which a 3D picture posted over here http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12231242-change3-update.html (http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12231242-change3-update.html) (Thanks Emily!) brought out.
The lander leg pads. They seemed to have pushed, and piled up some regolith on the outside, but not on the inside. That seems to suggest to me that there was some stroke/give in each leg when the lander dropped down. It's obviously not the dirt kicked out by the descent engine because even if that was firing at the time of touchdown (which we know it wasn't) - the dirt flying outward would've piled up on the inside.
Looking at the location of the peak on the small pile also seems to indicate that the legs did then retract a bit. (If they hadn't, the peak of the little piles would've been on the pads, as opposed to slightly away). I don't know if this happened at landing, or after the rover was deployed, reducing the weight of the lander on the surface. It'd be interesting to compare the size of these piles for all the four legs, when we do get unobstructed. imagery
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he lander leg pads. They seemed to have pushed, and piled up some regolith on the outside, but not on the inside. That seems to suggest to me that there was some stroke/give in each leg when the lander dropped down. ...
Looking at the location of the peak on the small pile also seems to indicate that the legs did then retract a bit. ..
There was a paper somewhere describing their lander leg suspension and shock absorbers. The entire platform was mechanically engineered to stay level IIRC.
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I have asked this before, but no reply, what's the rational for mounting the HG antenna on the same mast as the pancam? Does it save mass? Simplify structure?
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I have asked this before, but no reply, what's the rational for mounting the HG antenna on the same mast as the pancam? Does it save mass? Simplify structure?
I thought that Emily suggested a reason earlier in the thread: it reduces the number of things that have to be deployed and retracted. Reduces the number of things that can fail.
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I have asked this before, but no reply, what's the rational for mounting the HG antenna on the same mast as the pancam? Does it save mass? Simplify structure?
I thought that Emily suggested a reason earlier in the thread: it reduces the number of things that have to be deployed and retracted. Reduces the number of things that can fail.
Thanks, that's what I thought.
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I have asked this before, but no reply, what's the rational for mounting the HG antenna on the same mast as the pancam? Does it save mass? Simplify structure?
I thought that Emily suggested a reason earlier in the thread: it reduces the number of things that have to be deployed and retracted. Reduces the number of things that can fail.
Thanks, that's what I thought.
Could it also help with pointing the antenna? On-board image processing of the mast-cams, to track Earth. I don't know if it'd make a difference.
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first data from the IR spectrometer
http://www.sitp.ac.cn/xwzx/kydt/201312/t20131224_4003884.html
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There is a cutout in the side of the rover box so that the mast can lay flat.
Does anybody know if the mast will be withdrawn inside the body (and covered over with the solar panel) during nighttime, or if the mast will be laid flat, with the dish pointing up toward Earth?
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Chang'e 5 a big innovation on how it will return
http://tech.southcn.com/t/2013-12/24/content_88204235.htm (in Chinese Language)
Machine Translation:
The Chang'e five: return mode innovation
The three task is not over yet, Chang'e five has become a topic of town talk of the streets. Ye Peijian academician is the No. five innovations made detailed disclosure.
Chang five and Chang three, compared with one great leap is the No. five is composed of 4 components, the lander, riser, the orbiter, return device, 4 is added up to the quality, now all emission field all have launch, must to the newly established Hainan launch, but with the new Long March five emission.
Academician Ye Peijian also explains in detail the Chang'e five launch, falling process month, return. The long march five combined body 4 is launched into the orbit of the moon, the orbiter, return to a portfolio, the lander, rise to another combination, two combination, the lander with ascenders landed in a predetermined area. After falling to a predetermined area, a robot lander will be on the surface of the moon to catch things into a container, a mechanical hand can make hole, can be played on the moon 2 meters deep hole, to seize, then put into the container. The machine hand will also put the container into the riser lander inside, after rising is the moon take off. Fly then enter the orbit of the moon, and then with the orbiter docking and assembly to return, put up device inside the samples back to the transfer device, and then the riser away, the orbiter and return device around the moon back to earth.
Academician Ye Peijian field said, Chang'e five return there will be a great innovation. The past returns and return of Shenzhou non are direct returns, this time in order to solve the placement problem, to solve the land to adjust the carrying angle impact problem, separated into the atmosphere to 60 km will jump back into the universe to, then jump back to the atmosphere, and then come back. "The longer distances, go longer, we can get a lot of benefits, this method can reduce the heat load, reduce land angle and so on, so the return mode will also be the first test of our." Leaf said academician.
Of course, this is not the Chang'e five crossing attempt rashly, Chang'e four will be the first "crab". Academician Ye Peijian said, Chang'e four months will not fall, around the moon walk a natural return orbit, try to get 10.7 km speed and trajectory, the return and the number five as like as two peas, to verify this return can return, whether fall to a predetermined area. Prof. ye said, next year we can see it around the moon and back China
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Chang'e 4 won't land on the moon
Chang'e 5 a big innovation on how it will return
http://tech.southcn.com/t/2013-12/24/content_88204235.htm (in Chinese Language)
Machine Translation:
The Chang'e five: return mode innovation
The three task is not over yet, Chang'e five has become a topic of town talk of the streets. Ye Peijian academician is the No. five innovations made detailed disclosure.
Chang five and Chang three, compared with one great leap is the No. five is composed of 4 components, the lander, riser, the orbiter, return device, 4 is added up to the quality, now all emission field all have launch, must to the newly established Hainan launch, but with the new Long March five emission.
Academician Ye Peijian also explains in detail the Chang'e five launch, falling process month, return. The long march five combined body 4 is launched into the orbit of the moon, the orbiter, return to a portfolio, the lander, rise to another combination, two combination, the lander with ascenders landed in a predetermined area. After falling to a predetermined area, a robot lander will be on the surface of the moon to catch things into a container, a mechanical hand can make hole, can be played on the moon 2 meters deep hole, to seize, then put into the container. The machine hand will also put the container into the riser lander inside, after rising is the moon take off. Fly then enter the orbit of the moon, and then with the orbiter docking and assembly to return, put up device inside the samples back to the transfer device, and then the riser away, the orbiter and return device around the moon back to earth.
Academician Ye Peijian field said, Chang'e five return there will be a great innovation. The past returns and return of Shenzhou non are direct returns, this time in order to solve the placement problem, to solve the land to adjust the carrying angle impact problem, separated into the atmosphere to 60 km will jump back into the universe to, then jump back to the atmosphere, and then come back. "The longer distances, go longer, we can get a lot of benefits, this method can reduce the heat load, reduce land angle and so on, so the return mode will also be the first test of our." Leaf said academician.
Of course, this is not the Chang'e five crossing attempt rashly, Chang'e four will be the first "crab". Academician Ye Peijian said, Chang'e four months will not fall, around the moon walk a natural return orbit, try to get 10.7 km speed and trajectory, the return and the number five as like as two peas, to verify this return can return, whether fall to a predetermined area. Prof. ye said, next year we can see it around the moon and back China
I believe the reporters (or Ye) has confused the “Chang'e 5 precursor" mission that will test high speed re-entries with Chang'e 4...
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On 24Dec, the father of Chang'e Ye Peijian conducted a workshop in Guangzhou,China
I found it very informative. He discussed almost everything, from Chang'e 1 to Chang'e 5, mars mission, China's space station etc
http://online.southcn.com/h/20131217_270.htm (Chinese language)
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to the Chinese speakers: any new info?
Doesn't it exist any program for PC rather than for mobile phones allowing "visual translation"? The one I tested for the phone works 80% times, but it's quite uncomfortable for multiple texts...
The lander leg pads. They seemed to have pushed, and piled up some regolith on the outside, but not on the inside. That seems to suggest to me that there was some stroke/give in each leg when the lander dropped down. It's obviously not the dirt kicked out by the descent engine because even if that was firing at the time of touchdown (which we know it wasn't) - the dirt flying outward would've piled up on the inside.
I think the lander hit the ground quite hard, according to descent movie and lack of 4meters-hovering phase.
Anyway, another important thing is visible in the 3d anaglyph (http://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/images/3-moon/20131223_change_lander_anaglyph_f840.jpg): a "big" crater very close to one of the feet, big enough to contain the whole foot, and around 20 cm deep I think. (look at the left leg in 3d photo). Anyway even if the crater was exactly behind the foot, being the legs 4 I don't think it would have affected lander tilt.
Solar panels are also "strange": why are they so much bended? Were they open during landing and were maybe smashed down?!? (Also one panel of the rover appears down-bended when you look at the rover from front or rear).
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The first lander images showed the solar panels horizontal, so no, not lander hard and 'smashed down'. They are moveable, and probably tilted down for thermal control at local noon. At sunset the west-facing panel would tilt down to face the low sun, at sunrise the east-facing panel would tilt down to face the rising sun, we can expect them to move quite a bit.
I didn't see any mention of this elsewhere, but the 21 December drive video showed (a) that video is possible as well as individual images, and (b) that the ground-penetrating radar antennae were extended out behind the rover for their first use. In other images they are tucked away along the rover sides under the solar panels.
Phil
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I didn't see any mention of this elsewhere, but the 21 December drive video showed (a) that video is possible as well as individual images
Phil
Live TV from the moon for the first time in 41 years. I remember the frustration in Dec 1972 of the TV network's sparse coverage of Apollo 17. Now we have live HD from the moon, worldwide connectivity, and nobody can see it except a handful of elites.
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Live TV from the moon for the first time in 41 years. I remember the frustration in Dec 1972 of the TV network's sparse coverage of Apollo 17. Now we have live HD from the moon, worldwide connectivity, and nobody can see it except a handful of elites.
One can only hope that it puts a foot in the backside of sufficient other elites to ensure that we don't have to wait another 41 years...
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I didn't see any mention of this elsewhere, but the 21 December drive video showed (a) that video is possible as well as individual images
Are you sure that's not just a timelapse sequence similar to the Yutu deployment cameras where in reality just one frame every 1-2 seconds was taken?
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True... I guess I don't know that.
Phil
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Past days I read somewhere about live HD 3D video streaming capabilities of Yutu.
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this link (in Chinese) gives some details of the future objectives of Yutu's traverses:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/mil/2013-12/24/c_118692396.htm
a "large stone pyramid" about 42 meters SW of the lander, the a high ground to the W and a crater 10 m to the N.
the link also gives some detail of the driving sessions.
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(face palm) I bet a decade from now we will still be wishing they had just said "pointy rock".. :D
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Interesting: if Chang'e 3 will last up to april 2014 (4 months rather than 3), it will be able to witness both a lunar eclipse and a solar eclipse!
April 15th: total lunar eclipse; this will result into a solar eclipse seen from the Moon:
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OH2014.html#LE2014Apr15T
April 29th: annular solar eclipse:
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OH2014.html#SE2014Apr29A
Not sure about what will be visible from the Moon. Will the Moon create a shadow track or just a penumbra track?
Which eclipse simulator do you suggest to see eclipses from the Moon?
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Is it true that the lander still has significant amount of fuel? Now that the rover has departed from landing site, I wonder if it is possible for the lander to take off and land somewhere nearby. ::)
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Is it true that the lander still has significant amount of fuel? Now that the rover has departed from landing site, I wonder if it is possible for the lander to take off and land somewhere nearby. ::)
That would be like Surveyor 3's "hop" on the Moon. (Hmmm, I think it was #3!)
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the lander has vented its remaining fuel shortly after landing
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Surveyor 6! (go down to the middle of this page:)
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=1050&st=90 (http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=1050&st=90)
Phil
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Surveyor 6! (go down to the middle of this page:)
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=1050&st=90 (http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=1050&st=90)
Phil
OK, lousy memory!!!!
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No mention here, but apparently they are now in sleep mode. I'll look for a news link to post.
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http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-12/24/c_132993311.htm
An article indicating that the lander and rover were due to enter sleep mode at 7 AM Beijing time on Christmas Day.
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Lander today, rover tomorrow.
Phil
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The forthcoming lunar night, expected to begin on Dec. 26, will last for about two weeks, experts with the center estimated.
That was a chuckle for me. I'm sure their experts are doing slightly better than "estimating" it at "about two weeks" : )
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Blame the translation. There will continue to be 'errors' like this unless the translators are regular visitors to this forum or another. *Or even the Chinese journalists in the first place. Not that I enjoy this game of telephone.
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Xinhua news agency, 24th December
Deputy Director, Wu Fenglei of the Beijing Aerospace Control Center said the lander will be scheduled around 7:00 in the morning on the 25th into the lunar night sleep mode and the lunar rover will start its lunar night sleep around 1:00 on the 26th December.
Xinhua news agency, 25th December
...They had to sleep for about half a month, about in January 12th next year to "wake up", continue to work.
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Yutu went to sleep at 5:23 Beijing Time
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/sci/2013-12/26/c_132998160.htm
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a paper in Chinese on the thermal design of the APXS instrument on Yutu. also gives some detail of the RHUs
http://www.cjss.ac.cn/EN/abstract/abstract1994.shtml
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Leonard David's article on sample return:
http://www.space.com/24055-china-moon-sample-return-mission.html
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When can we expect release of LROC images?
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according to xephem, sunrise will occur in the vicinity of the landing site near midday UT on Jan 10th;
until then they will both be resting under the light of the Earth..in space no-one can hear you zzzz..
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more goodies shown on TV including, I think, some never-seen mutual images
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y6o9bX67uU
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This mission features in Chris Gebhardt's Year In Review Feature Part II:
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/12/yir-part-ii-lunar-saturnian-exploration-attention/
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CE-3 inside the payload fairing.
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http://spaceflightnow.com/china/change3/131227hibernation/#.Ur-eqfYmRDQ
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While we wait for more images and science data in January 2014 here is a JOKE :-
Why did The Princess and her Rabbit ( Change'3/Yutu ) have to land in Mare Imbrium ?
Because the "Man in the Moon" said "You cannot park in that Bay !! "
(Think car parking attendants ! )
Phill
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While we wait for more images and science data in January 2014 here is a JOKE :-
Why did The Princess and her Rabbit ( Change'3/Yutu ) have to land in Mare Imbrium ?
Because the "Man in the Moon" said "You cannot park in that Bay !! "
(Think car parking attendants ! )
Phill
Groan....
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Any update on the LROC images? They should have been obtained five days ago.
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last update (http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/index.php?/archives/844-LROC-16th-PDS-Release.html#extended) was posted on 14th of dec, although @LRO_NASA has been chattering on twitter two days ago. Nothing about CE-3 so far. I noticed there is a cool LRO tracking page (http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/whereislro/)
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Don't get too excited about the LROC images. Yes, they will be nice to have, but LRO is now in a higher orbit than when it started, with 2 m/pixel images instead of 50 cm resolution. The lander will only be about 2 pixels across, the rover maybe only 1 pixel across. We have previous LRO coverage at 1.5 m/pixel to compare it with, showing the very large rock SW of the lander - now there will be a second 'rock' which will be the lander, and a third small one which will be the rover. Tracks will be very hard to see because of the lower resolution, and because the new image has a fairly low sun angle (taken about the time the lander shut down for the night). Later images with higher sun may do better at showing tracks, and when we get them in a few months there will be more tracks to see (if they show at all).
Phil
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Call *that* a, you know, wossisname?
Losing the will to live...
Nope, lost it! At least there have been a total lack of 'no atmosphere' efforts (notice the entirely appropriate absence of the 'j' word from this post!).
(Not you Phil, the chap above you)
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Don't get too excited about the LROC images. Yes, they will be nice to have, but LRO is now in a higher orbit than when it started, with 2 m/pixel images instead of 50 cm resolution. The lander will only be about 2 pixels across, the rover maybe only 1 pixel across. We have previous LRO coverage at 1.5 m/pixel to compare it with, showing the very large rock SW of the lander - now there will be a second 'rock' which will be the lander, and a third small one which will be the rover. Tracks will be very hard to see because of the lower resolution, and because the new image has a fairly low sun angle (taken about the time the lander shut down for the night). Later images with higher sun may do better at showing tracks, and when we get them in a few months there will be more tracks to see (if they show at all).
Phil
That's a shame.....
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Any update on the LROC images? They should have been obtained five days ago.
http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/index.php?/archives/849-Change-3-Lander-and-Rover-From-Above.html
two little dots~
(http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/uploads/chang_e3_FI_opening.png)
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Nice - actually a bit better than I expected - so that's good! - but the tracks are not resolved as far as I can see.
Phil
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Nice - actually a bit better than I expected - so that's good! - but the tracks are not resolved as far as I can see.
Phil
Excellent!
It may be my imagination but I think there a faint wiggly track connecting the lander and the rover
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I know what you mean, but on the before/after GIF on the LRO site, that dark wiggly line is there before the landing as well.
Phil
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this week's issue of Aviation Week has an article on the development of CE-3's throttling main engine.
anybody willing to post it here?
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this week's issue of Aviation Week has an article on the development of CE-3's throttling main engine.
anybody willing to post it here?
No, because it's obviously copyrighted.
This isn't up for discussion, this is a warning to all.
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Any idea why the rover's shadow is larger than the lander's? Shouldn't it be the other way round?
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The rover did step off to the north of the lander (the large crater was indeed behind it in the egress photos) but it moved to the south side, where it is imaged here as the smaller dot with the smaller shadow.
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The current location can be seen on the route map here:
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=7756&pid=206012&st=15&#entry206012 (http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=7756&pid=206012&st=15&#entry206012)
Phil
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The rover did step off to the north of the lander (the large crater was indeed behind it in the egress photos) but it moved to the south side, where it is imaged here as the smaller dot with the smaller shadow.
Thanks
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this week's issue of Aviation Week has an article on the development of CE-3's throttling main engine.
anybody willing to post it here?
No article, but I have some pics I made at the Zhuhai Airshow in November 2012, where the CE-3 lander's main engine was exhibited together with a short description:
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http://english.ihep.cas.cn/prs/ns/201312/t20131230_115114.html (http://english.ihep.cas.cn/prs/ns/201312/t20131230_115114.html)
The APXS was used just before going to sleep, so it seems every instrument has now been tested.
Phil
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http://english.ihep.cas.cn/prs/ns/201312/t20131230_115114.html (http://english.ihep.cas.cn/prs/ns/201312/t20131230_115114.html)
The APXS was used just before going to sleep, so it seems every instrument has now been tested.
Phil
Excellent news, looking forward to the next day's activities.
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Besides, the energy resolution of AXS is estimated to be about 135 @5.9keV, which demonstrates that it is currently one of the best X-ray spectrometer for the planetary exploration in the world.
Reading this, after reading yet another opinion piece on how "china is 40 years behind us in space " ...
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New stamps commemorating the mission.
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Another 5 days to go before Change'3 site back in sunlight :-))
A-P
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I have been playing with some numbers concerning the "daytime" at the Chang-E 3 landing site. There is a parameter called the Sun's Selenographic Colongitude which can be found in many astronomical tables. For example http://astropixels.com/ephemeris/moon/moonkey.html. This parameter gives the lunar longitude of the "sunrise line" and thus it can be used to estimate the sunrise and sunset times at the Chang-E 3 landing site.
The results which I have are as follows:
Sunrise: (2013) Dec 8.6, (2014) Jan 7.2, Feb 4.1, Mar 7.4, Apr 5.9, May 5.4, Jun 3.9,
Jul 3.4, Aug 1.8, Aug 31.3, Sep 29.8, Oct 29.3, Nov 27.9, Dec 27.5
Sunset: (2013) Dec 23.4, (2014) Jan 22.0, Feb 20.6, Mar 22.2, Apr 20.7, May 20.2, Jun 18.6
Jul 18.1, Aug 16.6, Sep 15.0, Oct 14.6, Nov 13.1, Dec 12.7
I have estimated the sunrise/sunset times to 0.1 days in the above listing.
Since the spacecraft landed at a middle-latitude it will probably take a little time for the Sun to rise to an altitude which will allow the solar panels to be fully charged. Then again there is no thick atmosphere to weaken to solar heat as there is on Earth. Same for the end of operations as sunset approaches.
Of course, the end of operations came after local sunset last month. I wonder if these dates are when the Chinese decided that Chang-E 3 and Yutu were nicely asleep.
It will be interesting to see how the future activation and deactivation dates fit with the above listings.
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Nice idea but the dates all look a bit too early to me - are you possibly switching east and west longitudes? For instance it was my understanding that Yutu shut down on Dec. 26 (and the lander on Dec. 25), meaning sunset would be more like the 27th.
Phil
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I used the JPL Horizons web interface and the coordinates from the LROC team (44.1214°N, 340.4884°E, 2640 meters elevation). This gives the following RTS (Rise, Transit, Set) times for the sun at Chang'e-3 site as follows for one year from Dec 2013.
(Note this refers to the geometric horizon defined by the reference ellipsoid (doesn't take terrain into account) but should be good within a few minutes at worst.)
Date__(UT)__HR:MN Azi_(a-appr)_Elev
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2013-Dec-11 15:39 *r 88.2308 -0.2697
2013-Dec-19 04:38 *t 180.1299 47.1462
2013-Dec-26 17:35 s 272.1149 -0.2745
2014-Jan-10 05:28 *r 87.6417 -0.2674
2014-Jan-17 19:08 *t 180.0261 47.4570
2014-Jan-25 08:35 s 272.3790 -0.2736
2014-Feb-08 20:01 *r 87.6683 -0.2695
2014-Feb-16 09:23 *t 179.9142 47.3069
2014-Feb-23 22:20 s 272.0071 -0.2702
2014-Mar-10 10:49 *r 88.3043 -0.2645
2014-Mar-17 22:59 *t 179.8359 46.7513
2014-Mar-25 10:37 s 271.1326 -0.2677
2014-Apr-09 01:15 *r 89.3338 -0.2645
2014-Apr-16 11:44 *t 179.8155 45.9660
2014-Apr-23 21:39 s 270.0287 -0.2697
2014-May-08 14:53 *r 90.4598 -0.2622
2014-May-15 23:39 *t 179.8403 45.1774
2014-May-23 07:55 s 268.9939 -0.2649
2014-Jun-07 03:30 *r 91.3783 -0.2578
2014-Jun-14 10:59 *t 179.9134 44.5936
2014-Jun-21 18:06 s 268.3079 -0.2679
2014-Jul-06 15:07 *r 91.8526 -0.2584
2014-Jul-13 22:04 *t 180.0097 44.3596
2014-Jul-21 04:47 s 268.1288 -0.2662
2014-Aug-05 02:00 *r 91.7720 -0.2594
2014-Aug-12 09:16 *t 180.0987 44.5335
2014-Aug-19 16:28 s 268.5118 -0.2671
2014-Sep-03 12:34 *r 91.1504 -0.2633
2014-Sep-10 20:58 *t 180.1791 45.0770
2014-Sep-18 05:24 s 269.3683 -0.2673
2014-Oct-02 23:22 *r 90.1449 -0.2617
2014-Oct-10 09:24 *t 180.2062 45.8564
2014-Oct-17 19:34 s 270.4885 -0.2705
2014-Nov-01 10:54 *r 89.0064 -0.2668
2014-Nov-08 22:42 *t 180.1828 46.6625
2014-Nov-16 10:36 s 271.5589 -0.2699
2014-Nov-30 23:36 *r 88.0716 -0.2645
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How long is this mission estimated to continue for?
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Three months... just like Spirit and Opportunity.
Phil
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Any smartphone app with Yutu Time around? :-) For MERs there were a couple.
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Chang'e-3's landform camera have taken a picture of earth:
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Chang'e-3's landform camera have taken a picture of earth:
You can really tell that the Northern Hemisphere is in the middle of winter in that picture!
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More new pictures here http://slide.news.sina.com.cn/c/slide_1_2841_40326.html#p=1
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Here are the images in case they disappear.
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Seeking a fact check. Prior to this one by Chang'e 3, I cannot locate any photographs of earth *taken on/from the lunar surface* since Apollo 17. True?
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Until Chang'E 3, only one lander capable of taking an image has been on the lunar surface since Apollo 17... that was Lunokhod 2. I am not aware of any images by either Lunokhod that showed the Earth. So you are correct.
Phil
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Thank you.
I was asked if that UV image (of the plasmasphere) was of the Van Allen belts. "No", I think. Plasmasphere = low energy / cold plasma, Van Allen Belt = high energy protons and electrons.
fwiw,
Cluster Data Shows Intriguing Links Between Plasmasphere And Van Allen Belts
http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1112945850/van-allen-belts-and-our-plasmasphere-cluster-mission-091213/
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Yutu alive and well!
http://china.cnr.cn/NewsFeeds/201401/t20140111_514628680.shtml
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Yutu alive and well!
http://china.cnr.cn/NewsFeeds/201401/t20140111_514628680.shtml
That's good news! So where to now? Last I heard they were interested in the pyramidal crock on the rim of crater to the west. This area should give good exposures of local bedrock.
Again last I hear, the rover covered 40 m since landing. They should be able to do at least that this time, perhaps more. Other than the crater rim what over targets are there available in the area? I can think of a GPR traverse across the wrinkle ridge and contrasting analyses between the low and high Ti-basalt flows.
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Yutu is on the move again.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-01/12/c_133038491.htm
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Here's Emily's wrap-up (thus far): http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/01141430-updates-on-change-3.html
I'm not sure I get how the data is presented in the 'cubical' spectrograph. AIUI, each heat map face corresponds to one of the two spectrometers (let's say the top face is the Visible, and the one on the right the NIR). The redness/blueness on the heat-map corresponds to the intensity in a particular frequency bin. A pixel on the heat-map face at a distance x from the common edge between that face, and the image face corresponds to an image pixel at the same distance x, from the same edge, on the image face. So, in order to get the full information collected by the instrument, we'd need a movie of the heat-map faces, where successive frames represent the intensities in neighbouring frequency bins.
Also, does anyone know why Yutu is carrying a GPM, and not a reflection seismometer? Couldn't the latter function in a dual purpose mode? In a nominal/low power mode of doing seismology; and in a high-power mode -- serving as a potential rover extricator -- through forced acoustic compaction of loose regolith that may trap the rover (a la Spirit)? Or even prophylactic compaction - sort of expanding the envelope of terrain that the rover can traverse.. (technically, changing the mechanical characteristics of the terrain through perturbation is bringing previously off-limits regions into the envelope of possible exploration sites, but then again - you're not changing the composition and mineralogy)
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No, each face of the cube is an image of the surface in that wavelength. Follow one pixel all the way down the stack and you get a spectrum for that pixel.
As for the seismometer - what you describe sounds far too complex and energy-intensive for a small rover, possibly even potentially harmful to the rover, and I think the data would be far less able to resolve near-surface structures.
Phil
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No, each face of the cube is an image of the surface in that wavelength. Follow one pixel all the way down the stack and you get a spectrum for that pixel.
The top right corner of the image kind of nudges you toward that interpretation doesn't it? The columns of cool colours, despite the common edges having both bright and dark parts... :D I thought that, but then the complexity of colour perception, and the narrow spectral band that we perceive as visible played on my mind, and I thought something non-intuitive might be happening.
So, to confirm: each heat map is a row/column of the spectrum for the line of pixels (the top heat map being a spectrum for a horizontal line of pixels, and the one on the right, for a vertical line of pixels) formed by the common edge between the heat-map and the image, when you place one face perpendicularly and edge-on on the other.
As for the seismometer - what you describe sounds far too complex and energy-intensive for a small rover, possibly even potentially harmful to the rover, and I think the data would be far less able to resolve near-surface structures.
Harmful how? Reflected vibrations potentially leading to RUD? Or even S(low)UD? But the rover withstands launch! I wasn't considering anything more powerful/complex/power-hungry than a concrete vibrator (http://www.ebay.com/sch/Concrete-Vibrators-/25248/i.html) anyway. There doesn't have to be a strong vibration coupling between instrument and rest of rover either. Consider a sensor head linked to rover only by power/data cables... transported from a stowage location on the rover to the surface by the arm...
As regards the relative merits of each technology - from a science perspective - browsing through this paper (http://cetus.ucsd.edu/Publications/Publications/HildebrandAP2002.pdf) (which compared the two at a Controlled Archaeological test site) I think that acoustic interrogation would yield direct geomechanical information (as opposed to having to go from di-electric properties to mineral composition to geological conditions required for formation of such minerals), given that the velocity of propagation is dependent on the grain size, confining pressures, elasticity and grain sizes etc.
Plus, I know that the moon is essentially regarded as dead (in terms of geology) - but an acoustic sensor will be able to function in a passive mode too. Maybe monitor impacts, moonquakes (tidal stretching of the moon due to the ellipticity of its orbit around Earth being a periodic stressor perhaps) etc.
However, all that's hand waving. OTOH the paper does mention
1) detector size advantages for GPR
2) the relative ease of coupling EM waves to the soil
3) and that the acoustic method was susceptible to confusion from multiple reflections (though I'm hard pressed to think about a natural lunar process that results in heterogenous polygons with faces at all sorts of angles to wave propagation)
Having said all that, there doesn't seem to be a large difference in resolution. 0.34m (GPR) vs 1m (SRI) -- for their chosen frequencies, and assorted conditions. 3x is atleast the same order of magnitude, and the SRI value can potentially be increased. I'm also inclined to think that the requirements on the processing electronics would be quite a bit more stringent for GPR, not least because it would require higher clock speeds. (http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/40260/1/06-2693.pdf)
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I have used GPR on several occasions, and shallow seismic once, GPR it has several advantages over seismic that add up in this context.
1) It does not need good ground connection, GPR uses antennae on or just above the ground surface (as here). Seismic needs to have at least one geophone on the ground, and also a signal generator, such as a mechanical or muscle power hammer, or small explosive charge, making contact with the ground. Seismic is therefore much more mechanically complex and is a stop-start operation. GPR works on the move, the units I have used have either operated from a hand-towed cart (me being the donkey) or on a snake towed at 5 kph behind a two seater ATV. So all in all GPR is simpler to deploy and operate compared to seismic.
2) GPR is probably easier to miniaturise than seismic, a good thing for a rover of any size.
3) Under lunar conditions I would expect excellent penetration with GPR, probably better than a small seismic of comparable dimensions. If am reading the small diagram correctly they are seeing down to 100 m, which exceptional for such a small unit. GPR transmitters emit over narrow frequencies so can be tailored to specific depths you are interested in. I note that in the article it says two frequencies, which would be useful.
4) I have never heard of a seismic survey instrument being used for seismic monitoring. I don't know if this is even possible, seismic surveys and earthquakes generate signals in quite different frequencies.
I note that GRP was considered for the MERs at one stage. One GPR unit I have played with was built as a prototype for JPL, and very Heath Robinson it was too. But it was dropped because of two much electrical interference from other systems. ESA has a GPR on the ExoMars rover WISDOM).
Looking at the image there seems quite a bit to see. There is a shallow (down to ~30 m?) zone of strong, chaotic reflectors, probably the regolith. Below this is largely homogeneous unit to 80 m, and below that a slightly more heterogeneous unit, these may be stacked Mare basalt flows.
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While we wait again for more images and info from China of Change-3 lander and Yutu rover on Mare Imbrium I have been playing around with 3D Anaglyphs for Change3 lander and rover- not the best since original images not that great for 3D use. Maybe later images may be better for using ?
Couple of 3D images attached for which you'll need your 3d glasses
A-P
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CCTV is doing series about the Chang'e Team, detailing the people and technologies involve. Very cool, but all in Chinese though.
Chang'er + Yutu Electronics team
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_qLnJn6xCA
Profile on structural designer for Yutu's sensor mast, she was also sub-system structure designer for Shengzhou, Tiangong and Fengyun projects.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8VlXVBvoZA
The team responsible for all servos used in the project.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yqz5jbROEQ
The ream responsible for temperature control
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2dEB4BEqJw
EDIT:
Also found a 30 minute documentary of give a entire overview of the Chang'e 3 project and its development.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS1RDc1ZoZo
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Panorama taken between Dec 17 - 18 by the lander (click to enlarge), seems like the news agency cropped image into multiple pieces without providing the panorama in its original quality, I tried to put them together. Source here. (http://www.chinanews.com/tp/hd2011/2014/01-18/293067.shtml)
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I have been playing with some numbers concerning the "daytime" at the Chang-E 3 landing site. There is a parameter called the Sun's Selenographic Colongitude which can be found in many astronomical tables.
Thanks for that link to the lunar ephimerides. As an older paduan, I have much to learn.
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No, each face of the cube is an image of the surface in that wavelength. Follow one pixel all the way down the stack and you get a spectrum for that pixel.
(snip)
Not quite.
Two opposing and parallel faces of the cubes are the image in the longest and shortest wavelengths. Each parallel plane in the cube is the same image in an adjacent color. As Phil stated, drilling through any pixel in a direction perpendicular to the monochromatic image does give the spectrum of that pixel. A plane in that direction is the collection of spectra for a full column or row of the image.
Some imaging spectrometers, like the LEISA detector on the Ralph instrument on New Horizons, produce a hyperspectral data "parallelepiped". The same principle applies to planes in the middle, with a full image at specific wavelengths, but at the ends the images are restricted to smaller and smaller frames. For LEISA these will be images of dark space, and will be truncated from the data set. I do not know which technique is employed by the imaging spectrometer on Chang-e, but it is probably the former.
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Yes, I meant 'each layer', saying 'each face' in that sense, but obviously the wrong word. The outer surfaces of the cube are not images.
Phil
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Couple more early 3D image attempts of Change-3/Yutu
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Couple more days then the Sun will disappear from Mare Imbrium leaving Change'3 and Yutu in dark again for many days.
So, we have gone a couple weeks and no "new" images or solid science data from Chinese Space Agency apart from a panorama built up from earlier images and a brief statement they deployed "arm" (At least I have not seen any on space forums or main news outlets).
Of course, they are under no obligation to release information but I think they are missing a PR opportunity here . And, if no further information forthcoming we might start to construe its failed ?
A-P
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Perhaps what we can expect as the mission proceeds is a summary of events during each lunar day, at the end of the day. The most interesting thing to look forward to right now will be a new LRO image very soon, so we will know for sure where the rover is. Big move, all is well. Little move, not so good.
Phil
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Of course, they are under no obligation to release information but I think they are missing a PR opportunity here . And, if no further information forthcoming we might start to construe its failed ?
I think MRO would soon inform us about it....
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Of course, they are under no obligation to release information but I think they are missing a PR opportunity here . And, if no further information forthcoming we might start to construe its failed ?
I think MRO would soon inform us about it....
MRO is at Mars. How would it inform us about it?
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Its just a typo surely LRO - MRO.
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I don't know... that HiRISE is quite an amazing camera.
Phil
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:)
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Oh well the lander and rover are still alive and working - in fact late on January 22 (UTC) the rover performed direct data exchange to the lander via UHF - the first time two Chinese spacecraft communicate to each other on another planetary body. ;)
Source (http://bbs.9ifly.cn/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=13091&pid=287365)
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...
4) I have never heard of a seismic survey instrument being used for seismic monitoring. I don't know if this is even possible, seismic surveys and earthquakes generate signals in quite different frequencies.
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Now we have. (12:45 onwards. #TIL Philae's apparently carrying both types of instruments. Electromagnetic wave interrogtion, as well as acoustic.)
ESA commissioned this excellent video explaining how Philae works using lots of Lego:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oEaGjgOB0M (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oEaGjgOB0M)
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...
4) I have never heard of a seismic survey instrument being used for seismic monitoring. I don't know if this is even possible, seismic surveys and earthquakes generate signals in quite different frequencies.
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Now we have. (12:45 onwards. #TIL Philae's apparently carrying both types of instruments. Electromagnetic wave interrogtion, as well as acoustic.)
ESA commissioned this excellent video explaining how Philae works using lots of Lego:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oEaGjgOB0M (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oEaGjgOB0M)
Thanks for this. Comets are small bodies and the internal seismic events will generate high frequency signals making such an instrument possible.
Seismic monitoring and seismic surveying are on larger bodies require quite different types of instruments. We saw this with Apollo, where the siesmic observatories (PSEP and PSE) were quite different from the active seismic experiments (ASE).
The electromagnetic sounder is a permittivity probe, which is a very arcane device! It measures dielectric constant and conductivity of surface materials and relates it to water content. It also monitors the plasma environment.
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The rover is having a problem:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-01/25/c_133072906.htm
China's moon rover monitored with abnormity
English.news.cn 2014-01-25 10:48:05
BEIJING, Jan. 25 (Xinhua) -- China's moon rover "Yutu" (Jade Rabbit) has had an abnormity, and scientists are organizing an overhaul, the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence said on Saturday.
I think that "abnormity" should be "anomaly." (They probably meant "abnormality" which is not quite correct.)
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The rover is having a problem:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-01/25/c_133072906.htm
China's moon rover monitored with abnormity
English.news.cn 2014-01-25 10:48:05
BEIJING, Jan. 25 (Xinhua) -- China's moon rover "Yutu" (Jade Rabbit) has had an abnormity, and scientists are organizing an overhaul, the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence said on Saturday.
I think that "abnormity" should be "anomaly." (They probably meant "abnormality" which is not quite correct.)
From what I just saw from Chinese sources, it sounds like if the rover can't flip back the solar arrays inside the body for thermal protection during the lunar night. Big oops if that can't be solved in a few (Earth) day's time....
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Hmm... maybe three months was a bit optimistic, then :(
Hope they can fix it... would be very disappointing if Yutu didn't last for at least its nominal mission.
Hopefully it'll do as well as Spirit did when it encountered its sol 17 anomaly, and continue on to have a long happy life (minus the part about getting stuck in a sand dune)
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More interesting wording in a new dispatch:
China's Moon Rover Monitored With Abnormity
Beijing Xinhua in English 0306 GMT 25 Jan 14
BEIJING, Jan. 25 (Xinhua) -- China's moon rover "Yutu" (Jade Rabbit) has had a mechanical control abnormity, and scientists are organizing an overhaul.
The abnormity occurred due to "the complicated lunar surface environment," the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND) said on Saturday, without giving further details.
The abnormity emerged before the rover went into its second dormancy at dawn on Saturday as the lunar night fell again, according to the SASTIND.
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It seems all the news reports now states yutu has entered sleeping mode and the statement about the malfunction has being stated in the past tense. I think they have found a work around, but is unsure how it will work, so they won't call it a fix yet. hopefully the more detail will emerge tomorrow.
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EDIT:
The Yutu weibo got an update, sound pretty pessimistic
前几天感觉不好没怎么说话,结果现在能和大家说话的时间也不多了……虽然我经常给大家讲大家都不笑的笑话,但其实月球探险真的不轻松呢。能来月球看看,还能和大家分享,我已经很开心了。再过不久月球上又会降到零下180℃。不知道到时能不能修好,所以,我先提前祝大家春节快乐!
my translation
A few days before I was feeling bad, so I didn't update much, and the time we can talk to each other is numbered...... although I often tell you bad jokes, but in fact is really not easy to do lunar explorers. Able to look at the moon, but also to share with you, I've been very happy. In the near future on the moon will drop to minus 180 ℃. I do not know when I can be repaired, so, let me wish you all a Happy New Year in advance!
The Yutu weibo just updated 10 minutes ago, it's still broken.
对不起,让大家难过了……师父们还没放弃治疗呢,我也不会轻易放弃。这样吧,给大家看篇关于我的文章,是我其中一位师父以前写的。但师父很腼腆,不好意思告诉大家他是谁(也可能是怕大家说他写得不好……),委托给果壳君来发布。看完后我觉得,师父你这样解构别人好恐怖哦……
my translation
I'm sorry, everyone is so worry about me ...... masters won't give up treat me, I will not give up easily. Well, for everyone to see articles me. But the master is very shy, embarrassed to tell you who he is (or may be afraid of everyone that he is not well written ......), entrusted to the king to publish a Nutshell. After reading, I think it's horrorible to deconstruct me that......
From the popular theory seems to be the rover had hit some rough patchs, and the structure had some damage causing things to not close properly.
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Quote press site:
"China's moon rover "Yutu" (Jade Rabbit) has had an abnormality, and scientists are organizing an overhaul..."
Maybe they are "organising" to send a manned repair crew :-)) [Joke]
A-P
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Have they released any additional statements regarding the nature of anomaly encountered?
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............ But the master is very shy, embarrassed to tell you who he is (or may be afraid of everyone that he is not well written ............
This is a little like the Soviet days when Korolev was only known in western world as The Chief Designer :-))
At least they now have around 14 days or so, to analyse any data on Yutu malfunction and prepare upload commands that may rectify problem or at least provide a workaround.
As the Chinese said (above) "...in fact is really not easy to do lunar explorers...." (Mars One and Google Lunar X Prize take note)
I'm sure they will give it their best attempts at rectification and they seem to have a good team assembled so, lunar cheerleaders let's hear it and get behind the Chinese and wish them success
A-P
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100% agreed! It's been a fantastic mission to date - and weathering a lunar night is not a trivial endeavor. Hoping for continued success with the lucky Rabbit!
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"At least they now have around 14 days or so, to analyse any data on Yutu malfunction and prepare upload commands that may rectify problem or at least provide a workaround."
Alas, no - the problem seems to be that the camera mast and high gain antenna could not be protected from the cold of the lunar night - over the previous night the mast folded back into a box on the rover top and was covered by one solar panel. That closed compartment was warmed by a small radioisotope heat source. The other solar panel was oriented to face the rising sun next morning. This time the mast could fold back but the solar panel could not fold over it to enclose it. So there may be major repercussions from this that 14 days of analysis will not help to resolve.
Phil
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"At least they now have around 14 days or so, to analyse any data on Yutu malfunction and prepare upload commands that may rectify problem or at least provide a workaround."
Alas, no - the problem seems to be that the camera mast and high gain antenna could not be protected from the cold of the lunar night - over the previous night the mast folded back into a box on the rover top and was covered by one solar panel. That closed compartment was warmed by a small radioisotope heat source. The other solar panel was oriented to face the rising sun next morning. This time the mast could fold back but the solar panel could not fold over it to enclose it. So there may be major repercussions from this that 14 days of analysis will not help to resolve.
Phil
Presumably they will still have low gain comm, and don't they also have small navigation cameras on the base of the rover?
It is possible that Yutu could be crippled, but still operational.
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1. How fast does the terminator move across the solar surface - at the Rover's latitude?
What's Yutu's top speed?
Why can't they upload a software routine that asks the rover to track, and remain in a zone of optimum temperature (in the vicinity of the terminator) - all the way across the moon?
The rover has an TX/RX strong enough to communicate with Earth. So it's not dependent on the lander for this. This also means that it can communicate with LRO/LADEE. There are loads of encoding and modulation strategies that may be employed to get data back. It doesn't have to be bitmap images. Engineering data -- A(x) second long radio burst at frequency B(x) if you've driven C(x) metres in the last D(x) hours -- etc. etc.
Earlier in this (or the discussion thread), we've also spoken about beyond the horizon communication on the moon...using an "ionosphere"... so that may be possible too. Although, with the frequency shift required, it might not be all that much "easier".
Can someone make me feel better and tell me that the bottleneck is sunset speed, and perhaps the terrain, and not the politics?
2. Do they think that rover will freeze irreversibly if the panels don't fold back? Assuming stuff isn't going to literally break/come apart because of differential thermal contraction; that the solar cells (and the computer/software) survive; they should be able to get back to a stable thermal config shortly after sunrise --if they can hardwire "on" the resistive electrical heaters (assuming the rover has any), and the computer to the array outputs, prior to shutdown. Maybe they can introduce a temperature sensor based trigger event to restart the computer? Oh, what they wouldn't give for a space qualified FPGA on the rover right now :)
EDIT: Ok, it seems, from Blackstar's post that it's only the mast that'll be affected. That's more optimistic than the entire rover. But I am wondering about the RTG heat escaping faster from an unshielded empty box, than a box covered with the panel - cooling the rest of the rover down.
3. I know that without an atmosphere to speak of, it probably won't make much of a difference - but can the rover drive to the lander, and station itself near it, or near a lander heat source? Could it possibly make contact with some part of the lander that can act as a conductive heat source to the rover? The lander doesn't have a lot of spare thermal energy, but I'm wondering if they can operate in the engineering safety-factor zone for both; if they establish a conductive heat path between them.
Also, come to think of it.. if they're sure that rover will be doomed otherwise, can't they command it to drive sideways (array first) against the sloping lander legs, or the engine bells, and force the panels up – and close them? How fragile are the arrays on a typical spacecraft? The fact that you can see standing waves in a video of the panel deployment (CE'2 I think it was) doesn't bode well for this approach.
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The idea of keeping ahead of the terminator is a good one, but alas it won't work here. At the equator the terminator moves about 12 degrees per earth day. That's 360 km/day. At this latitude it's still about 250 km/day. Little Yutu can't outpace that, and if it could it would only work until the limb was reached in 6 days.
A related idea was proposed by Red Whittaker and colleagues some years ago. You drive a circle around the pole, far enough out that big areas of shadow are avoided but close enough in that the circle is not too big. To put rough numbers to it, the Moon takes about 700 hours to rotate once, so if you could drive at 1 km/hour you could drive a circle around the pole with a circumference of 700 km. That works out (very roughly again) to a circle at about 83 or 84 degrees north. Whittaker called it a 'Magellan Route', circumnavigating the Moon once per day. That could last for months or years until the rover broke down but it includes far side driving.
Phil
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EDIT: Ok, it seems, from Blackstar's post that it's only the mast that'll be affected. That's more optimistic than the entire rover.
Note: I have no knowledge of this stuff at all. I'm just speculating. I was pointing out that simply because they could not retract the mast does not mean that the entire rover will die from cold. They could still have other systems alive. And it is possible that they might not lose the mast either. We won't know until the next daytime cycle.
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Emily has just posted a few more messages here, but we really need some skilled Chinese translations of these tweets.
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/01251527-bad-news-for-yutu-rover.html
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..and if it could it would only work until the limb was reached in 6 days.
What d'you mean?
Anyway, 250 km per day seemed reachable. to me, so I put the numbers into Wolfram Alpha. Turns out that the speed required of Yutu, to turn a latitude circle at its current location into a 'Magellan route' is ~12 kmph. (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%282*pi*lunar+radius%29*cos%2844.12+degrees%29%2Flunar+rotation+period)
That still seemed so much within reach of a rover design. Of course, not something as small as Yutu. I thought something Curiosity sized should be able to do that... but then... http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/marsrover.cfm (http://)
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Presumably they will still have low gain comm, and don't they also have small navigation cameras on the base of the rover?
It is possible that Yutu could be crippled, but still operational.
yes,Yutu Rover have two hazard avoidance cameras on the lower front portion
and...duration CE-3 landing to the site, land cameras have taken photos of the areas which Yutu will route in next three months。
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This is gonna be a nervous 14 days...
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A preprint which appeared online a few days ago: Geologic characteristics of the Chang’E-3 exploration region (http://"http://phys.scichina.com:8083/sciGe/EN/abstract/abstract508651.shtml")
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The 8th/9th February 2014 is when Mare Imbrium becomes illuminated again by sunlight.
A-P
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"..and if it could, it would only work until the limb was reached in 6 days."
"What d'you mean?"
If you are racing to the west to keep ahead of the advancing sunset terminator, you eventually reach the limb of the Moon. You know, the edge of the disk as seen from Earth. Then you lose contact with Earth. Mission over.
The maximum distance ever driven in an Earth working day by an extraterrestrial remote controlled vehicle is 3 km (Lunokhod 2 on 18 March 1973). 250 km per day is a bit unreasonable.
Phil
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Not to mention what happens when inconvenient terrain (mountains, crevasses, etc) gets in the way.
The lunar surface isn't quite up to the standards of the Interstate highway system - or even a pleasant country lane.
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"..and if it could, it would only work until the limb was reached in 6 days."
"What d'you mean?"
If you are racing to the west to keep ahead of the advancing sunset terminator, you eventually reach the limb of the Moon. You know, the edge of the disk as seen from Earth. Then you lose contact with Earth. Mission over.
The maximum distance ever driven in an Earth working day by an extraterrestrial remote controlled vehicle is 3 km (Lunokhod 2 on 18 March 1973). 250 km per day is a bit unreasonable.
Phil
Hence my earlier mentions of LRO/LADEE, and the possible (though almost certainly not on this mission) BVR communication. I know that the orbiters have a limited FOV too, and their own constraints (especially in a low mapping, dust,exosphere monitoring orbit); and that the coverage would be very sporadic.. if there are any passes at all.
Not to mention what happens when inconvenient terrain (mountains, crevasses, etc) gets in the way.
The lunar surface isn't quite up to the standards of the Interstate highway system - or even a pleasant country lane.
Yeah, I know it's rough terrain, and it's remarkable enough that these wheeled guys do the hard things, but 12 kmph at g/6, shouldn't be too much worse a driving experience that what we have on some of the worst roads in the world :P For a bigger rover of course. Funnily enough, the Apollo LRV (with a designed top speed of 13 kmph) makes the cut (albeit barely) for a "Magellan rover", if placed in Yutu's position. Granted, that speed is probably quoted for flat terrain - but given that Gene Cernan was able to clock 18 kmph, there's some margin there. Especially if they started off in the Lunar morning... anywhere not right on the sunset edge really.
Btw, I love Curiosity... and I know Mars mass, and consequently design budgets are TIGHT, but 1.5 inches per second (137 metres per HOUR) is a bit ridiculous. This is my official protest. :P
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Re: Curiosity being slow: rocker bogie suspension doesn't do so hot at high speeds - you need to be going very slowly if you want to drive over a rock without breaking anything, for instance. The wheel hitting the rock has to completely stop, climb up over it, then gently roll over and off of it. If you're going too quickly, you'll just careen into it and probably do a good bit of damage from the impact...
The Apollo rovers had a more traditional suspension system, and had no need to worry about time delay or anything, so the astronauts could drive them however they saw fit and react immediately to any problems or obstacles.
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Thanks, a most interesting paper, I hope they can achieve it. As has been said, it's going to be a nervous 14 days.
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General rover stuff probably belongs in a different thread, guys.
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New SCMP article with better translation of the rabbit tweets:
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1414534/jade-rabbit-moon-rover-may-be-beyond-repair-state-media-hints
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Of course, they are under no obligation to release information but I think they are missing a PR opportunity here . And, if no further information forthcoming we might start to construe its failed ?
I think MRO would soon inform us about it....
MRO is at Mars. How would it inform us about it?
"M", "L", it's the same, just an hires imager... ;-)
I meant LRO of course.
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If Yutu survives the next fortnight of lunar night but emerges in a "non roving" mode, they may still be able to use any kit still working eg cameras,robo-arm,etc.if mast and solar panels work. If mast out then depends how they make comms to Change'3 lander.If through mast then a no-go. If solar panels useless then power will be the issue even if other kit working.
If Yutu is no-go in a fortnight's time, they still have Change'3 lander and its cameras - we hope :-))
A-P
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If Yutu survives the next fortnight of lunar night but emerges in a "non roving" mode, they may still be able to use any kit still working eg cameras,robo-arm,etc.if mast and solar panels work. If mast out then depends how they make comms to Change'3 lander.If through mast then a no-go. If solar panels useless then power will be the issue even if other kit working.
If Yutu is no-go in a fortnight's time, they still have Change'3 lander and its cameras - we hope :-))
A-P
Lander's cameras died on the first night.
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The color camera on a stalk died. The scientific payload should last a while yet, hopefully.
Either the rover freezes in its sleep or it doesn't. This certainly makes Mars seem balmy!
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The color camera on a stalk died. The scientific payload should last a while yet, hopefully.
Either the rover freezes in its sleep or it doesn't. This certainly makes Mars seem balmy!
All the more impressive how long the Lunokhod rovers lasted then.
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The color camera on a stalk died. The scientific payload should last a while yet, hopefully.
Either the rover freezes in its sleep or it doesn't. This certainly makes Mars seem balmy!
Surveyor 1 survived its' lunar night, indeed several, even though AFAIK it was not designed to, so I think there is hope here.
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That's true (EDIT - Lunokhod comment)! And some of the US Surveyors lasted into a second or even third lunar day as well, with diminished functionality (and they were not intended to survive the night).
Two points - (1) the Lunokhods were pressurized, and a radioisotope heat source warmed air which circulated throughout the interior. Yutu's warm compartment is not pressurized.
and (2) those older missions were not using our new-fangled electronics. Their older systems were more robust. Ours are a zillion times more capable, but they are fragile.
Phil
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Moon is the destination, the earth is my home.
Good night, earth. Good night, humanity.
1 year later, the little bunny comes with Chang'E 4, passing my body covered with lunar dust. I sigh : 'The night on the moon is really cold.' ...
10 years later, his spacesuit is shinning, I am hold and raised, facing the direction to home : I am coming home!
100 years later, 'Mum, is this Yutu the lunar rover? ' I lie behind the glass in museum , witnessing we make step after step into the sea of stars ...
I hope Yutu and its successors , along with the other space programs, would inspire more and more children to contribute their talent to space exploration ... Those ambitious space missions might be the best thing of the Cold War, if not the only good thing.
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The color camera on a stalk died. The scientific payload should last a while yet, hopefully.
Do you have more info on that failure?
I was impressed by their ability to land and deploy the rover. Those are significant engineering achievements. But the problem with lifetimes is disappointing. Is there something in systems engineering that would account for this--they tested for ability but not lifetime/duration or something?
Put another way, could there be an overall process failure that led to these bad things happening, something that could explain how they could be successful at the tough things, but then fail on the duration?
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What is instructive here is the Chinese are the first to attempt long duration missions on the lunar surface without first attempting short duration missions.
The Surveyor and early Luna missions all failed fairly quickly (as intended) and in failure gave mission planners information on how the lunar night killed spacecraft.
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Spudis had some interesting pov on TheSpaceShow 1/26.
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What is instructive here is the Chinese are the first to attempt long duration missions on the lunar surface without first attempting short duration missions.
The Chinese were clearly reaching on this mission. They set more challenging goals than they really needed to. For instance, a lander AND a rover. They could have just gone with the lander alone. And the lander is bigger than necessary for carrying only the rover.
I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. In fact, I admire that they took some risks and they should not be dinged for trying. But in retrospect, they might have added a step or two, such as a lander only, then lander/rover. Building two different spacecraft that operate together is not twice as hard, it is more than twice as hard because of the systems engineering challenges. They might have been straining their capabilities.
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The color camera on a stalk died. The scientific payload should last a while yet, hopefully.
Do you have more info on that failure?
I was impressed by their ability to land and deploy the rover. Those are significant engineering achievements. But the problem with lifetimes is disappointing. Is there something in systems engineering that would account for this--they tested for ability but not lifetime/duration or something?
Put another way, could there be an overall process failure that led to these bad things happening, something that could explain how they could be successful at the tough things, but then fail on the duration?
My recollection it wasn't meant to survive the first night, it's role was done.
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The color camera on a stalk died. The scientific payload should last a while yet, hopefully.
Do you have more info on that failure?
Emily Lakdawalla mentions on her blog that the lander's camera failed. She has been pretty on top of Chang'e 3's status. http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/01141430-updates-on-change-3.html
UPDATE JAN 15 09:42 PT/17:42 UT: According to an unofficial Yutu rover account on Weibo (Chinese Twitter), the lander's main color camera did not survive lunar night.
No new pictures from the lander have been released since then to the best of my knowledge.
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What is instructive here is the Chinese are the first to attempt long duration missions on the lunar surface without first attempting short duration missions.
Couldn't you say that all missions ever attempted were long duration missions. The ones powered by solar power, and batteries atleast. Nothing inherent in their designs that would prevent them from operating for ages..?
The Chinese were clearly reaching on this mission. They set more challenging goals than they really needed to. For instance, a lander AND a rover. They could have just gone with the lander alone. And the lander is bigger than necessary for carrying only the rover.
I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. In fact, I admire that they took some risks and they should not be dinged for trying. But in retrospect, they might have added a step or two, such as a lander only, then lander/rover. Building two different spacecraft that operate together is not twice as hard, it is more than twice as hard because of the systems engineering challenges. They might have been straining their capabilities.
In that case I'd better prepare you for Chandrayaan 2. ISRO's planning on putting all three types of spacecraft ever used thus far - an orbiter, a lander and a rover - on what will only be our third venture beyond GEO.
But here's a question. Why can't we simply back any spaceflight agency for doing what they did, without having to qualify it with a caveat elaborating how we would've done something differently? Especially if the comment is retrospective, and a helluva lot more so when there's either no evidence that the "different approach" (largely, and most often a different discretionary, programmatic decision, as opposed to something based on apriori, objective technical knowledge) would've definitely yielded more favourable results?
I'm not dinging on you Blackstar, but genuinely asking.
EDIT - Internet points for spotting the self-reference.
EDIT 2 - A lot of the arguments on accepting greater risk for HSF can definitely be made here. NASA probes that keep outliving their "intended" life aren't always a good thing. If your models told you that it'd switch off in 3 years, and it's still going 10 years after that, then your models clearly need to be refined. OTOH, how much of this is because the lifespans quoted are deliberately conservative (to avoid such censure in case of failure before completion of "primary" mission)?
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But here's a question. Why can't we simply back any spaceflight agency for doing what they did, without having to qualify it with a caveat elaborating how we would've done something differently? Especially if the comment is retrospective, and a helluva lot more so when there's either no evidence that the "different approach" (largely, and most often a different discretionary, programmatic decision, as opposed to something based on apriori, objective technical knowledge) would've definitely yielded more favourable results?
You do read this site, don't you? You realize that one of its tenets is people questioning what is happening or has happened, right?
And why should anybody "simply back any spaceflight agency for doing what they did"? What is the requirement or the logic for us doing that? Your question implies that nobody makes mistakes and that we all need to be cheerleaders. Why?
My point--and I'll repeat it because I think it's entirely reasonable--is that the Chinese seem to have taken a different approach than other countries that have gone before them, and they might not have been wise in doing so. I note that in this program, as in their human spaceflight program, their approach seems to be to take fewer, but longer strides. Look at their human spaceflight program: it took them about a decade to get to a human-tended space station. That's roughly the same amount of time that the Russians and the Americans took. But China did it with lots fewer flights than either of them. In the case of Chang'e-3, they were doing several bold things at once--first landing, big lander, plus rover. That may have come to bite them. A proper failure investigation might come to the conclusion that they should have simply focused this first landing mission on fewer goals. We don't know yet.
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I wouldn't say it's come back to bite them at all. Yes, if the rover mission really has a terminal failure before the nominal mission end, that is disappointing, but they have achieved most if not all their mission goals, and returned useful data. Remember that the lander is still working and will be returning further astronomical observations. They can legitimately call this mission a technical success.
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EDIT 2 - A lot of the arguments on accepting greater risk for HSF can definitely be made here. NASA probes that keep outliving their "intended" life aren't always a good thing. If your models told you that it'd switch off in 3 years, and it's still going 10 years after that, then your models clearly need to be refined. OTOH, how much of this is because the lifespans quoted are deliberately conservative (to avoid such censure in case of failure before completion of "primary" mission)?
Most of our system are designed to have 95% to 99% probablility of surviving the mission, be it a year or five.
Given a distribution of failure mechanisms, as opposed to draining a battery or other finite resource, it is only proper that there is a 50% probability of survival for many times the design lifetime. Very few systems "switch off".
Yutu seems to have been designed to survive two lunar nights. A test program should have subjected something like an engineering model. to some multiple of two thermal cycles to see if it survived and what failed first. Does anyone have any insight into the Chinese thermal-vacuum testing?
There are limits to this testing and probably some subleties in simulating lunar conditions vs standard vacuum conditions for Earth satellites. We can hope they tell us what some of the issues are with the lander and rover.
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Btw, longer strides might be them working and developing a strong system engineering skill for the time they expect to actually push beyond what others have done.
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Space is not just hard, it's expensive.
While one approach would be to do incremental steps over multiple missions, that takes multiple missions. A cheaper approach is to have a goal for a given mission and a whole bunch of stretch goals. The Chinese had a successful landing. That goal was achieved. If they had billed that as the only goal we would be marvelling at how much more they achieved[1] when they also had a rover roll off the ramp and take a few pics. Surviving one night is not an inconsiderable achievement and I'm impressed on what they were able to achieve with this launch.
1 - you know, like how a certain nameless company recently almost got a complete water landing of their stage way ahead of schedule, when the goal was only to see if the first burn worked...
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Yutu seems to have been designed to survive two lunar nights. A test program should have subjected something like an engineering model. to some multiple of two thermal cycles to see if it survived and what failed first. Does anyone have any insight into the Chinese thermal-vacuum testing?
Several other things could have happened - an operator error may have caused mechanical damage, or showered dirt over some mechanism, obstructing it.
Reading between the lines these seem to know what has happened, so presumably they can learn from it for the next rover.
In the mean time, they got two full days out of three, which isn't bad, even assuming Yutu doesn't wake up in ten days time.
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Yes, it could be that the arm with the cameras and antenna might be dead from the cold, but the rest of Yutu might survive. This means it could still do some Lunar science, but only within visual range of the lander via the UHF communication system.
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first presentations on CE-3 at the next Lunar and Planetary Science Congress next March
http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2014/pdf/sess622.pdf
just preliminary analyses, which is not too surprising since the probe landed just one month and half ago, but who said the Chinese were not going to share their results?
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first presentations on CE-3 at the next Lunar and Planetary Science Congress next March
http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2014/pdf/sess622.pdf
just preliminary analyses, which is not too surprising since the probe landed just one month and half ago, but who said the Chinese were not going to share their results?
I wish I could go to LPSC. There's always interesting stuff. I just hope that the State Department doesn't mess up their visas. LPSC is the premier conference on lunar and planetary science and it is the place where the Chinese should be presenting.
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The Chinese were clearly reaching on this mission. They set more challenging goals than they really needed to. For instance, a lander AND a rover. They could have just gone with the lander alone. And the lander is bigger than necessary for carrying only the rover.
I guess this means they intend to do more with the same lander design, more or less?
Im unclear on Yutu malfunctions and loss of science, and which burning questions will now not be answered for some years. They succeeded in landing and deploying something on the surface and more missions are planned. Im pretty happy about that though for sure I would have loved for Yutu to have cruised around for a fair distance and gathered enough tourist snapshots for a coffee table book. Im really hanging out for a mission to the permanently shadowed regions. This looks like good progress.
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The Chinese were clearly reaching on this mission. They set more challenging goals than they really needed to. For instance, a lander AND a rover. They could have just gone with the lander alone. And the lander is bigger than necessary for carrying only the rover.
I guess this means they intend to do more with the same lander design, more or less?
They want to use it for lunar sample return. The lander gives them good capability for that.
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Reaching is good. Think Apollo 8. It would be a total waste of money to test the lander and then test the rover on a separate flight.
This lander will be used 4 times (in the current plan, who knows how many later uses?) - next will be Chang'E 4 with another rover. It was to use enhanced software for hazard avoidance etc., and different instruments, but clearly it will now be modified to fix this issue as well. Then there will be two sample returns, CE5 and CE6.
Phil
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Reaching is good. Think Apollo 8. It would be a total waste of money to test the lander and then test the rover on a separate flight.
But there's a trade off with risk. If the lander and rover had crashed on the surface, then people would say that it was a waste of the rover to fly it without testing the lander first.
I'm not saying that's the case--it's China's space program and who am I to tell another country how to run their space program?--but these kinds of considerations exist. The Chinese approach seems to be to take fewer but larger steps, and it is possible that at some point that's going to cause them to fall down.
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Reaching is good. Think Apollo 8. It would be a total waste of money to test the lander and then test the rover on a separate flight.
But there's a trade off with risk. If the lander and rover had crashed on the surface, then people would say that it was a waste of the rover to fly it without testing the lander first.
I'm not saying that's the case--it's China's space program and who am I to tell another country how to run their space program?--but these kinds of considerations exist. The Chinese approach seems to be to take fewer but larger steps, and it is possible that at some point that's going to cause them to fall down.
Given the immense successes of the mission I don't think we can reasonably say they have fallen down.
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Given the immense successes of the mission I don't think we can reasonably say they have fallen down.
First, note the conditional clause "if."
Second, they didn't reach their lifetime goal.
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Given the immense successes of the mission I don't think we can reasonably say they have fallen down.
First, note the conditional clause "if."
Second, they didn't reach their lifetime goal.
The lander is still operating as far as we know. Only the rover may have not reached it's lifetime goal. Disapointing, but not a failure. It has still met all the other objectives and delivered useful science. Chandrayaan did not reach its' full mission either, but is regarded as a success
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Given the immense successes of the mission I don't think we can reasonably say they have fallen down.
First, note the conditional clause "if."
Second, they didn't reach their lifetime goal.
The lander is still operating as far as we know. Only the rover may have not reached it's lifetime goal. Disapointing, but not a failure. It has still met all the other objectives and delivered useful science. Chandrayaan did not reach its' full mission either, but is regarded as a success
Yeah, and I'm not arguing that, so I don't understand what your beef is.
Success is measured along a spectrum, not black/white, yes/no.
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Given the immense successes of the mission I don't think we can reasonably say they have fallen down.
First, note the conditional clause "if."
Second, they didn't reach their lifetime goal.
The lander is still operating as far as we know. Only the rover may have not reached it's lifetime goal. Disapointing, but not a failure. It has still met all the other objectives and delivered useful science. Chandrayaan did not reach its' full mission either, but is regarded as a success
Yeah, and I'm not arguing that, so I don't understand what your beef is.
Success is measured along a spectrum, not black/white, yes/no.
My only "beef" (if you want to call it that) is "falling down" and "not reaching the lifetime goal" suggests a general failure. However, as you correctly say there is a spectrum here. Chang'e 3 has been highly successful overal.
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Chang'e 3 has been highly successful overal.
In terms of engineering goals (minus the lifetime of the rover).
NASA science missions tend to have level 1 and level 2 science goals. In order to be considered successful from a science perspective, they have to achieve the level 1 goals. We don't know how China measures their own science goals. It is possible that they achieved their engineering goals, but not the science goals. For instance, if a key science goal involved going to some geological feature a certain distance from the landing site and they did not do that, then they could have failed at the science goals. That's one reason why it will be interesting if the Chinese present at LPSC this year. They may offer insights into their science goals for this and future missions.
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Harsh climate conditions are not at all the cause of yutu failure! Didn't you read the chinese "cryptic" report? The cause is the terrain.
What I understand is that, given the panels can rotate around orizontal axis, the mechanism was overstressed when yutu passed over a small crater, or when a wheel came abrubtly down back to ground after passing over a small rock.
How much delicate and inadequate are those panels for an harsh surface is visble in very first images of the rover taken from its back.
Even on a flat terrain, motors must provide much more power to rotate around orizontal axis.
Panels rotating around vertical axis would have been much better.
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Harsh climate conditions are not at all the cause of yutu failure! Didn't you read the chinese "cryptic" report? The cause is the terrain.
What I understand is that, given the panels can rotate around orizontal axis, the mechanism was overstressed when yutu passed over a small crater, or when a wheel came abrubtly down back to ground after passing over a small rock.
How much delicate and inadequate are those panels for an harsh surface is visble in very first images of the rover taken from its back.
Even on a flat terrain, motors must provide much more power to rotate around orizontal axis.
Panels rotating around vertical axis would have been much better.
That's quite a statement to make on very little data and no analysis.
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Harsh climate conditions are not at all the cause of yutu failure! Didn't you read the chinese "cryptic" report? The cause is the terrain.
What I understand is that, given the panels can rotate around orizontal axis, the mechanism was overstressed when yutu passed over a small crater, or when a wheel came abrubtly down back to ground after passing over a small rock.
How much delicate and inadequate are those panels for an harsh surface is visble in very first images of the rover taken from its back.
Even on a flat terrain, motors must provide much more power to rotate around orizontal axis.
Panels rotating around vertical axis would have been much better.
All of this is speculation at best...
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Harsh climate conditions are not at all the cause of yutu failure! Didn't you read the chinese "cryptic" report? The cause is the terrain.
What I understand is that, given the panels can rotate around orizontal axis, the mechanism was overstressed when yutu passed over a small crater, or when a wheel came abrubtly down back to ground after passing over a small rock.
How much delicate and inadequate are those panels for an harsh surface is visble in very first images of the rover taken from its back.
Even on a flat terrain, motors must provide much more power to rotate around orizontal axis.
Panels rotating around vertical axis would have been much better.
All of this is speculation at best...
Not to mention that since the panels have to be horizontal you are always going to have a horizontal axis .....
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Sir Patrick Stewart dresses up as China's dying lunar rover, bids farewell to humanity.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/5/5384412/sir-patrick-stewart-dresses-up-as-chinas-dying-lunar-rover-bids
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Sir Patrick Stewart dresses up as China's dying lunar rover, bids farewell to humanity.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/5/5384412/sir-patrick-stewart-dresses-up-as-chinas-dying-lunar-rover-bids
I will always choose Kirk over Picard, but Patrick Stewart beats out William Shatner by a mile.
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Cue 'Sunrise' in the 'Grand Canyon Suite'.
Any peeps from either vehicle?
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no news so far, very quiet.
supposedly we'll know by 2/10 14:00 when the moon is view of Chinese comm site, or 19:00 if they choose to press release on the evening news cycle and after several hours effort. If they press early, then it's probably good news, if late probably bad news, since they need to make sure the bunny is dead after poking at it for few hours.
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Yes, per luhai67, next few days will be interesting.
Mare Imbrium - Laplace F area - is now 'visible' on Moon near side.
Hope they can make comm connxns and retrieve any data to further analyse Yutu/Change'3 condition.
And, if ready and possible, upload any new commands that may alleviate or work around failed conditions.
Maybe send a "digital carrot" for "bunny" :-))
A-P
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Sir Patrick Stewart dresses up as China's dying lunar rover, bids farewell to humanity.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/5/5384412/sir-patrick-stewart-dresses-up-as-chinas-dying-lunar-rover-bids
Yeah, but I found Jon Stewart's gurning and try-hard manner too painful to watch. Even he can be funnier than that...
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Sir Patrick Stewart dresses up as China's dying lunar rover, bids farewell to humanity.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/5/5384412/sir-patrick-stewart-dresses-up-as-chinas-dying-lunar-rover-bids
Yeah, but I found Jon Stewart's gurning and try-hard manner too painful to watch. Even he can be funnier than that...
Agreed... I really hate this whole "lol china sucks they only did something we did 40 years ago" thing.
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If the comm/controlfailure is a cold-contraction crack in a circuit board, they have been known to 'mend' when the avionics get hot and expand again. Don't bury the rabbit yet.
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Two hours ago the 'China Space' Facebook page claimed a signal had been received from the lander vehicle, but nothing yet from the rover.
One comment: "Daniel Nasa Gov -- We will hopefully get back news of the rabbit after sunrise today February 10 at 15:00 hrs (3 pm), Beijing local time, and confirm whether safe or unabl [.] China has not released any official or detailed information on the cause of the malfunction or recovery actions taken by Chinese space engineers. Dust accumulation on the rover and gears may possibly be to blame for the failure to retract, based on unofficial accounts. Jade Rabbit’s unofficial Weibo account, China’s version of Twitter, has been overflowing with messages of sympathy. One user, named Amaniandlove, wrote, “You have done a great job Yutu. You have endured extreme hot and cold temperatures and show [sic] us what we have never seen. Hope you get well soon, but no matter what, it is your presence that makes [the Moon] about 390,000 kilometres away dazzling. Jade Rabbit is a hero not only for China but for the whole population of the earth. Independence that will wake up or no I really hope that jade rabbit will wake up and we get information! Take care! Daniel Macedonia"
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Sir Patrick Stewart dresses up as China's dying lunar rover, bids farewell to humanity.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/5/5384412/sir-patrick-stewart-dresses-up-as-chinas-dying-lunar-rover-bids
Yeah, but I found Jon Stewart's gurning and try-hard manner too painful to watch. Even he can be funnier than that...
Agreed... I really hate this whole "lol china sucks they only did something we did 40 years ago" thing.
And of course the US has never had a robotic lunar rover.
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And of course the US has never had a robotic lunar rover.
Yeah, only the four on Mars. Rather pathetic.
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Sir Patrick Stewart dresses up as China's dying lunar rover, bids farewell to humanity.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/5/5384412/sir-patrick-stewart-dresses-up-as-chinas-dying-lunar-rover-bids
Yeah, but I found Jon Stewart's gurning and try-hard manner too painful to watch. Even he can be funnier than that...
Agreed... I really hate this whole "lol china sucks they only did something we did 40 years ago" thing.
Well, like they say, those who can't ... Blogg.
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No follow-up news anywhere I can find about the China Space Facebook page claim of signal from the lander.
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http://pjm.uhf-satcom.com/twtr/change3_lander2.jpg
http://pjm.uhf-satcom.com/twtr/change3_lander2_uplink1.jpg
Whoa!! The first chart is labeled "uplink reflected off the moon". In English this means the radio command from Earth just bounced off the surface and was detected as a pulse, NOT that any signal from a vehicle on the moon was received and decoded on Earth. This could just be a translation problem, OR a complete misunderstanding by the page's operators in Beijing. It's NOT evidence that either vehicle is functioning. The second chart DOES claim downlink, but I can't read it, and no official press announcement seems to have been made. Unpop the champagne corks, friends -- at least for a little while longer.
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the guy who tweeted these images - https://twitter.com/uhf_satcom describe the downlink image as:
A nice signal from the Chang'e'3 lander after its 'sleep'
I don't know how to interpret the spectrum, though.
note that he posted two reflected uplink spectra and commented on the second
uplink TX went off deactivating 8496MHz downlink from lander!
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Yeah, but I found Jon Stewart's gurning and try-hard manner too painful to watch. Even he can be funnier than that...
I like Stewart a lot, but he has never been very pro space exploration. I've watched him for years and for many years he would occasionally do a segment that went something like "Mars rover found water on Mars. Who cares?" or "Cassini spacecraft found ice around Saturn. Who cares?" He has done less and less of those things over the years, but he's not the kind of host who regularly has astronauts or space scientists on his show, other than Neil deGrasse Tyson.
On the other hand, Stephen Colbert whose show follows Stewart's every night,is clearly a space enthusiast. There are lots of examples of this. He often has on scientists and astronauts and has stories about spaceflight. His humor about space might be silly, but it rarely comes from the opinion that it is a waste of money.
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Yeah, only the four on Mars. Rather pathetic.
Yep, it is pathetic saying "Nyah, China did something (Moon robotic rover) that USA did 40 year ago" when, in fact USA did NOT deployed any Moon robotic rover. This is called lie.
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Even if Rover is dead the mission is far from a failure. They proved their lander technology and how successfully place a Rover on moon. Not bad for a first attempt.
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Agreed... I really hate this whole "lol china sucks they only did something we did 40 years ago" thing.
Landing on the Moon is a significant achievement. The fact that it happened after a 37 year gap is important. So is the size of that lander, and what it implies for the future.
Yes, the USSR scored all of the lunar robot "firsts" (flyby, far-side image, impact, orbit, landing, rover, sample-return, not to mention first orbit and landing on both Mars and Venus), and the U.S. landed 12 people, but the last lander, Luna 24, was in 1976. Apollo ended more than four decades ago. NASA is currently parceling off the remains of its dormant launch site. Not only has the Luna program long been shut down, but the USSR itself no longer exists.
The fact is that right now only China has an active lunar landing program. Only China has something on the Moon that may still be active. Everyone else is just watching.
- Ed Kyle
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Yeah, only the four on Mars. Rather pathetic.
Yep, it is pathetic saying "Nyah, China did something (Moon robotic rover) that USA did 40 year ago" when, in fact USA did NOT deployed any Moon robotic rover. This is called lie.
A lot of those comments on other sites came from people not that into space exploration who were talking about rovers on the moon in 1972. The ones driven by astros of course. Stop making such a big deal about it.
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uhf_satcom reports:
No signals tonite on 8.4GHz from either the Chinese lunar lander or the rover. Will keep monitoring the situation for a bit...
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http://pjm.uhf-satcom.com/twtr/change3_lander2.jpg
http://pjm.uhf-satcom.com/twtr/change3_lander2_uplink1.jpg
Whoa!! The first chart is labeled "uplink reflected off the moon". In English this means the radio command from Earth just bounced off the surface and was detected as a pulse, NOT that any signal from a vehicle on the moon was received and decoded on Earth. This could just be a translation problem, OR a complete misunderstanding by the page's operators in Beijing. It's NOT evidence that either vehicle is functioning. The second chart DOES claim downlink, but I can't read it, and no official press announcement seems to have been made. Unpop the champagne corks, friends -- at least for a little while longer.
OK, I'm an electronic engineer so I might be able to add some insight here. First of all the graphs are at 496 MHz downlink and 209 MHz uplink, while the text says 8496 MHz downlink and 7209 MHz uplink. This is confusing. Why doesn't the graph just show the frequencies being measured, i.e., 8496 and 7209 MHz? Maybe the system conveniently has two frequency multipliers at 7 and 8 GHz, so that the resultant intermediate frequency values are 496 MHz and 209 MHz, respectively.
For the 496 MHz downlink, the upper curve shows the frequency spectrum at a signal level of -75 dB (that's pretty low). There is no clear peak in the centre and the signal looks pretty random. The blue signal below shows signal amplitude as a function of colour. Red is a high signal level while blue is low. The horizontal axis is frequency and the vertical axis is time, indicated by the values at the left. In this case we see pretty clear the signal level gradually rise from about -75 dB at 495 and 497 MHz at the edges to -69 dB at 496 MHz at the middle. That's a pretty weak signal, as to be expected from the lander which won't have much transmit power. The bandwidth could be around 2 MHz.
For the 209 MHz downlink we see a much stronger signal at -56 dB at a very narrow bandwidth. The bandwidth looks to be only 20 to 30 Hz! With coding, the data rate might only be 5 bit/s. We can also see the frequency changing with time. In the 200 second interval shown, the frequency shifts about -60 Hz indicating the source is accelerating away from us. Using the formula dv = c*df/f0 we get dv = 3x10^8*60/7.209x10^9 = 2.5 m/s. The acceleration is dv/T = 2.5/200 = 0.012 m/s^2, a very low value, probably indicative of the Moon appearing to accelerate away from the observer.
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And of course the US has never had a robotic lunar rover.
Yeah, only the four on Mars. Rather pathetic.
True but irrelevant. Chang'e 3 and Yutu are major achievements and should be celebrated as such, not the subject of infantile nationalistic sneers from the commentariat.
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Yeah, but I found Jon Stewart's gurning and try-hard manner too painful to watch. Even he can be funnier than that...
I like Stewart a lot, but he has never been very pro space exploration. I've watched him for years and for many years he would occasionally do a segment that went something like "Mars rover found water on Mars. Who cares?" or "Cassini spacecraft found ice around Saturn. Who cares?" He has done less and less of those things over the years, but he's not the kind of host who regularly has astronauts or space scientists on his show, other than Neil deGrasse Tyson.
On the other hand, Stephen Colbert whose show follows Stewart's every night,is clearly a space enthusiast. There are lots of examples of this. He often has on scientists and astronauts and has stories about spaceflight. His humor about space might be silly, but it rarely comes from the opinion that it is a waste of money.
[OT]Do you remember the story about NASA renaming the exercise treadmill after Colbert, (Combined.... Resistance Trainer or some such) instead of a node when his fans overwhelmed a naming contest? They were said to offer another clever bactronym for STEWART for renaming the toilet (Sanitary....Waste....) which he was said to decline. Good choices for all involved. [/OT]
It was a particularly childish segment. Chang'e is a real accomplishment.
While the US can and has done this, we should again, but China did.
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So this is it.
http://www.ecns.cn/2014/02-12/100479.shtml
Chinese rover has been lost forever.
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So this is it.
http://www.ecns.cn/2014/02-12/100479.shtml
Chinese rover has been lost forever.
So Yutu is dead and Chang'e is blind... now I have this awful and sad image in my mind of Chang'e trying to find her rabbit but being unable to, not knowing it's died. :(
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OK, I'm an electronic engineer so I might be able to add some insight here.
thanks Steven, that's much clearer now!
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So this is it.
http://www.ecns.cn/2014/02-12/100479.shtml
Chinese rover has been lost forever.
At this stage probably nothing but an official statement release would matter - there are too many claims and guesses out there at this moment to actually determine the rover's status... ;)
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So this is it.
http://www.ecns.cn/2014/02-12/100479.shtml
Chinese rover has been lost forever.
Lost is a pretty accurate term for much of space but I think we should find a different one for the moon.
We will always know exactly where it is, probably even see it occasionally, and it will be right there waiting for us when we finally go to visit.
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Hmm.....this report (http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2014-02-12/212229448547.shtml) is claiming that the rover is "showing signs of activity"! Xinhua News is the source for it so....... 8)
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Official Xinhuanet:
http://t.home.news.cn/p/t/30849664_0000014425bd531400d2955d22704526
Xinhuanet on Tencent Weibo:
http://t.qq.com/p/t/362386008552526
【情况趋好,再等等——玉兔有望再传音讯】一位正在抢救小兔子的嫦娥三号任务核心人员刚才用嘶哑的声音、兴奋的语调告诉记者:“小兔子情况趋好,有点再醒的迹象,再等等。”这是自上月25日玉兔进入月夜以来记者第一次听到积极消息。小兔子,加油!师傅们,你们辛苦了!记者余晓洁
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OK, China Space Facebook page reports : Yutu is alive.
Apparently, rover's death has been announced too soon and this is what they say
https://www.facebook.com/ChinaSpace?fref=ts
Official news: Yutu is still alive. Mission control is busy working on it. Please give them more time.
The mission control called it too soon before the lunar night. Now, there are positive signs. They don't want to make that mistake again. So they are being cautious about reporting anything.
Even though there are positive signs, don't get your hope too high though. Yutu is not going be as functional as before. The real end may not be far.
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Those are encouraging news.
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And what is the state of Chang'e-3?
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And what is the state of Chang'e-3?
https://twitter.com/uhf_satcom
Chang'e'3 YUTU lander is alive! Xband signals detected from moon and also EME reflection of Chinese TTC uplink on 7.2GHz - pics to follow!
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https://twitter.com/uhf_satcom
Yutu signal is "pretty good"
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and signal from Yutu!
http://pjm.uhf-satcom.com/twtr/yutu_8462077.jpg
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The Rabbit! Still, it lives!
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Hooray! I now will be referring to Yutu as a zombie rabbit, and taking my premature declaration of its demise being wrong like a man.
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The above slides as a single pdf.
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The above slides as a single pdf.
Thanks a bunch for those, Blackstar! Who presented those?
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The above slides as a single pdf.
Thanks a bunch for those, Blackstar! Who presented those?
I don't know offhand. They were just presented at a big meeting in Europe in the past day or so.
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Good news! Thanks :).
And from Xinhua:
China's lunar rover "awakes" despite abnormality: spokesman
China's moon rover Yutu has waken up from a troubled dormancy although experts are still trying to figure out the cause of its abnormality, a spokesman with the country's lunar probe program said on Thursday.
"Yutu has come back to life!" said Pei Zhaoyu, the spokesperson.
Pei said the moon rover, named after the pet of a lunar goddess in ancient Chinese mythology, has now been restored to its normal signal reception function. But experts are still working to verify the causes of its mechanical control abnormality.
The abnormality emerged before Yutu entered its second dormancy on the moon on Jan. 25 as the lunar night fell.
"Yutu went into sleep under an abnormal status," Pei said , adding that experts were initially concerned that it might not be able to survive the extremely low temperatures during the lunar night.
"The rover stands a chance of being saved now that it is still alive," he said.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/sci/2014-02/13/c_133111548.htm
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The above slides as a single pdf.
thank you!
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Thanks very much Blackstar for posting the pdf. Can anyone translate the labels on this radar plot?
One of the interesting science questions is how thick the high titanium dioxide (TiO_2 at 6%) and high iron oxide (FeO at 17%) basalt that Chang'e landed on, which lies on top of the low Ti (2%) and low Fe (16%) basalt to the north. In a previous paper using satellite data, the Chinese estimated the thickness at less than 70 metres.
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Thanks very much Blackstar for posting the pdf. Can anyone translate the labels on this radar plot?
One of the interesting science questions is how thick the high titanium dioxide (TiO_2 at 6%) and high iron oxide (FeO at 17%) basalt that Chang'e landed on, which lies on top of the low Ti (2%) and low Fe (16%) basalt to the north. In a previous paper using satellite data, the Chinese estimated the thickness at less than 70 metres.
the labels on this radar plot?
vertical lable is NanoSecond(ns),horizontal lable is "number of channels"
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Thanks very much Blackstar for posting the pdf. Can anyone translate the labels on this radar plot?
One of the interesting science questions is how thick the high titanium dioxide (TiO_2 at 6%) and high iron oxide (FeO at 17%) basalt that Chang'e landed on, which lies on top of the low Ti (2%) and low Fe (16%) basalt to the north. In a previous paper using satellite data, the Chinese estimated the thickness at less than 70 metres.
the labels on this radar plot?
vertical lable is NanoSecond(ns),horizontal lable is "number of channels"
There are two horizontal axis labels, the one on top is "number of channels", the one below is "meters".
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Nanoseconds refers to the time taken fore the signal to return, it can be approximately correlated to depth, although it is dependent on the physical properties of the substratum. With multiple channels it should be possible to stack the returns, giving better resolution.
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Is it likely we will hear about the lander's health today?
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I thought the lander's signal was confirmed earlier already.
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I have asked uhf_satcom whether he thought that the Yutu signal was coming from the LGA or HGA. intercepting a signal from the HGA would confirm that the antenna+camera mast is deployed and still functional. he answered that
based on previous signals I would reckon what I see is from the LGA. So far only seen 1 'test' via the HGA
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Yayy Yutu. They need to send up a digital cawwot.
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Here is a digital carrot for Yutu :-))
This carrot was grown by myself and Dr Ian Richards in Icelandic Surtsey Island "virgin" tephra ash ( a lunar simulant per Dr Gene Simmons, then NASA Chief Lunar Geologist) ) way back in 1975 in support of work on space settlement crop growing studies.
Phill Parker
UK
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The above slides as a single pdf.
Thanks a bunch for those, Blackstar! Who presented those?
I have found the presentation on the stsc 2014 meeting:
http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/oosa/COPUOS/stsc/2014/index.html
here is presentations:
http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/oosa/en/COPUOS/stsc/2014/presentations.html
The progress and achievement of Chang'e-3
Q. Wang, China Powerpoint Presentation
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Thanks Lsquirrel and lllzh. OK, assuming a refractive index n = 1.65, this gives an approximate depth d = T*c/(2*n) we have at
8 ns <= 0.7 m (smooth layer)
9.5 ns <= 0.9 m (dark layer)
16 ns <= 1.5 m (striped layers)
120 ns <= 11 m (wavy layers)
The other plot shows
2200 ns <= 200 m (wavy layers)
3700 ns <= 340 m (smooth layer)
The horizontal lines at 2200 ns could indicate the boundary between the light northern mare and the dark mare where Chang'e 3 landed. I presume dark areas have low reflectivity and white areas have high reflectivity. Anyone want to take a stab at what that dark layer near the top is? It can't be ice as the Apollo core samples went below that depth. I'm sure the geologists will have a lot of fun trying to interpret this data.
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The top layer with the parallel stripes is most likely near surface noise. You see it in all GPR plots, seismic too.
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A preprint which appeared online a few days ago: Geologic characteristics of the Chang’E-3 exploration region (http://"http://phys.scichina.com:8083/sciGe/EN/abstract/abstract508651.shtml")
that article has now been printed in Science China Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy - see http://phys.scichina.com:8083/sciGe/EN/abstract/abstract508651.shtml and it also has made the cover of the journal: http://phys.scichina.com:8083/sciGe/fileup/COVER/20140212181816.jpg
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It is now nearly a week since the Change'3/Yutu area was sunlit .
Where are the further updates on how the technicians are dealing with trying resurrect Yutu ?
They must have had further data downlinked by now (?) and maybe a better understanding of the fault/s ?
A daily bulletin from the Chinese Space Agency - no matter how short - would be ideal ?
Remember,CSA, we are supporting you, Change'3 and Yutu !
A-P
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Well, the Chinese don't seem to care much about whether we are supporting them or not.
One new issue is if the "top" cannot closely correctly, this may also expose the interior to heat from the sun, which is not fun.
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I was flipping through my image collections earlier and came across this image of a Yutu poster displayed at Paris Air show last year. Not the best image since poster was quite a distance from me and I used zoom hence pixelation
Apollo-phill
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One new issue is if the "top" cannot closely correctly, this may also expose the interior to heat from the sun, which is not fun.
My impression is that one of the solar panels forms the lid so open during the day is the nominal config. If they are stuck part way, that could be a problem.
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Looks like the "problem" is wheel/bogie related, as it turns out that Yutu was almost fully operational on the third lunar day (which it didn't move for the whole period), with the PanCam, VIRS and GPM working (I assume that the APXS is too, just that ground controllers aren't bothered with pulling its arm out): http://www.chinanews.com/mil/2014/02-23/5870836.shtml (http://www.chinanews.com/mil/2014/02-23/5870836.shtml)
And of course the lander's LUT and EUV imager were working as well for the whole lunar day. The lander went into hibernation for the 3rd lunar night yesterday, with the lander following several hours ago.
Here's a (new?) photo by the PanCam of the rover:
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This photo was taken by Yutu.
Looks like the "problem" is wheel/bogie related, as it turns out that Yutu was almost fully operational on the third lunar day (which it didn't move for the whole period), with the PanCam, VIRS and GPM working (I assume that the APXS is too, just that ground controllers aren't bothered with pulling its arm out): http://www.chinanews.com/mil/2014/02-23/5870836.shtml (http://www.chinanews.com/mil/2014/02-23/5870836.shtml)
And of course the lander's LUT and EUV imager were working as well for the whole lunar day. The lander went into hibernation for the 3rd lunar night yesterday, with the lander following several hours ago.
Here's a (new?) photo by the PanCam of the lander:
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This photo was taken by Yutu.
Looks like the "problem" is wheel/bogie related, as it turns out that Yutu was almost fully operational on the third lunar day (which it didn't move for the whole period), with the PanCam, VIRS and GPM working (I assume that the APXS is too, just that ground controllers aren't bothered with pulling its arm out): http://www.chinanews.com/mil/2014/02-23/5870836.shtml (http://www.chinanews.com/mil/2014/02-23/5870836.shtml)
And of course the lander's LUT and EUV imager were working as well for the whole lunar day. The lander went into hibernation for the 3rd lunar night yesterday, with the lander following several hours ago.
Here's a (new?) photo by the PanCam of the lander:
Yup - I typed the wrong word.
Here's the news report in English: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-02/23/c_133136587.htm (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-02/23/c_133136587.htm)
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BEIJING, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) -- China's lunar rover Yutu entered its third planned dormancy on Saturday, with the mechanical control issues that might cripple the vehicle still unresolved.
According to the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND), Yutu only carried out fixed point observations during its third lunar day, equivalent to about two weeks on Earth.
Yutu's radar, panorama camera and infrared imaging equipment are functioning normally, the control issues that have troubled the rover since January persist.
==========================================================================
At last - some news (whether bad/good). In this case - at least hopeful !
Some news on Change'3 lander would be useful,too.
Still rooting and supporting for you,China
Go China
A-P
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The "problem" with the rover has finally been reported: some sort of electrical problem with the motor-driving circuit board. That's still unresolved as of right now so some luck is needed again for the rover to wake up on the next lunar sunrise.
Source (http://"http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2014-03/01/c_119561976.htm")
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and an English release: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-03/01/c_133152096.htm
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in the latest issue of the Chinese Journal of Space Science: Chang’E-3 Lander’s scientific payloads (http://www.cjss.ac.cn/EN/abstract/abstract2024.shtml)
the full paper is not yet available, but it should be in a few days
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Just a couple days to go before Change'3/Yutu are bathed in sunlight again - so will be interesting time see if either/both respond to commands again.
Hope they do !
A-P
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When is the probe expected to wake up?
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Maybe two days after sunrise, so in 3 or 4 days. Originally Yutu would have one solar panel tilted down, nearly vertical, and turned to face the rising sun. Now it cannot tilt the panel or turn the rover so it must wait for the sun to rise high enough to shine on the solar panel.
Phil
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UHF Satcom reports no signals from the Moon so far - neither downlink, nor uplink signals:
https://twitter.com/uhf_satcom
1. Just had a quick check for X-Band signals off the Moon - nothing from either Yutu or the Chang'e 3 lander downlinks, no sign of 7GHz uplinks
2. Despite hours of observations, nothing but thermal noise detected from the Moon tonite - Yutu and Chang'e 3 all quiet, no 7.2GHz EME either.
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This site seems to imply the rover has survived.
http://news.163.com/14/0312/19/9N5KNCJ300014JB6.html
中新社北京3月12日电 “‘玉兔’现在状态很好,预计还可以超期服役很长时间。”全国政协委员、中国航天科工集团第三研究院院长魏毅寅12日在北京接受中新社记者采访时透露。
...
魏毅寅告诉记者,尽管“玉兔”的设计寿命将至,但是它现在状态很好,此前生病但已经被唤醒,预计使用寿命将比设计寿命长很多。
China news agency, Beijing, March 12 - "'Rabbit' is now in good shape, you can also expect extended service a long time." CPPCC National Committee, China Aerospace Science and Industry Group's third dean Weiyi Yin accepted in Beijing on the 12th News Agency reporter that interview.
...
Weiyi Yin told reporters that despite the "rabbit" design life is approaching, but it is now in good shape, had been sick but wake up, long life than expected design life of many.
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THIS is great news! I wonder how long it will take for traditional media to get to it. ;-)
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https://twitter.com/uhf_satcom
1. Hmm a funny thing happened whilst listening for Yutu! A 'spur' that I discounted has Doppler, and is coming from the Moon... So I have investigated this a bit more, and its been there for the past 3 days... http://pjm.uhf-satcom.com/twtr/8462040.jpg … is the FFT 40KHz below Yutu's freq
2. http://pjm.uhf-satcom.com/twtr/8462040.jpg
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Quote :
Well, this may well be a downlink from Yutu rover in some 'emergency' mode... Its either very low rate data or something is broken...
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This is the signal:
http://pjm.uhf-satcom.com/twtr/8462040b.jpg
We don't know what's the meaning of this low frequency signal. Really. Guess we should wait official sources...
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From twitter:
Ah telemetry is back from Yutu, looks pretty bad... and certainly nowhere near as strong as previously, Maybe being commanded... will check
EDIT : And, China is in comms with Yutu, it is now back on 8462.072MHz with data, and uplink EME is being detected on 7202.377MHz - a huge signal!
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So, to sum it up:
https://twitter.com/uhf_satcom
The Yutu rover appears alive and responding to radiosignals.
However, the signal is weaker than before. Thus, we're not sure about its health status.
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According to @UHF_Satcom:
China's Yutu rover seems to be back in full chat mode
good signals now, signal levels returned to pre-sleep ones.
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Now it's time for new pictures then, come on Yutu! :-)
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if I understand the google translation of this http://www.sastind.gov.cn/n112/n117/c303631/content.html correctly, CE-3 and Yutu received a software update and were commanded to reboot. is this correct?
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if I understand the google translation of this http://www.sastind.gov.cn/n112/n117/c303631/content.html correctly, CE-3 and Yutu received a software update and were commanded to reboot. is this correct?
No, it's not correct unfortunately. No software update was mentioned in that report.
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thanks. so what does the release say?
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thanks. so what does the release say?
Basically it says that the instruments on the lander and rover are working nominally since they have woken up (07:21 UTC March 12 for the lander and 22:42 UTC March 13 for the rover).
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LADEE observations of Chang'e-3 landing.
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{So now I'm wondering about how, in a lunar polar water architecture (although I get the appeal of mass driving a high-ISP prop), you could intelligently sinter, or add some coating to, a landing zone, so as to maximize thermalization, and retain, if not actively recover, as much water as possible. Recovery would probably only happen on timescales of volatile hopping. Kinda eco.}
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Presentations at LPSC on Chang'e-3.
thanks! I spot a few previously unseen pictures from Yutu...
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in the latest issue of the Chinese Journal of Space Science: Chang’E-3 Lander’s scientific payloads (http://www.cjss.ac.cn/EN/abstract/abstract2024.shtml)
the full paper is not yet available, but it should be in a few days
full paper (in Chinese) now available. looks very interesting
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Well, in the long article http://www.chinanews.com/mil/2014/03-19/5969485.shtml they say that due to the unspecified failure some or all of the three conditions for Yutu night mode were not met before the second lunar night:
故障尚未解决,第二个月夜却要到来。当初,科研人员对月球车正常情况下进入月夜的姿态有三个设计:一是车头朝南,二是车身的左右侧倾斜在负二度到正一度之间,三是太阳翼和桅杆要收拢。“玉兔”生病后,三个条件都无法满足。
Failure is not resolved, the second Moon night has to come. At first, researchers under normal circumstances rover attitude into the moon night with three designs: first, front facing south; second, the left and right side of the body tilt between minus two degrees to plus one; third, solar wing and mast are folded. "Rabbit" after illness, three conditions are not met.
My guess remains the same as early: Yutu lost the capability of moving somewhen between Jan 14 and Jan 21, hence couldn't met conditions (1) and (2).
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My understanding of some information from the http://www.chinanews.com/mil/2014/03-19/5969485.shtml Chinese article is as follows (edited with some paraphrasing ):-
The National Defense Science and Industry Bureau and the General Armament Department rover troubleshooting leadership attaches great importance to the work and the strong support of the "company" (programme organisation I assume ) from top to bottom . Ray Fanpei general manager, deputy general manager Yuan Jie had a special trip to SkyCity Party leadership, gave command to deploy the work, and to keep an eye on the latest progress of the work; headquarters aerospace department, model development units, Chang E III test flight control teams and expert groups have been organized together quickly, with the front and rear for fault location advice.
[Other names mentioned in article are probe deputy chief , Yang Jia ,
The Emergency test team developed a series of troubleshooting options, including some unconventional mode of operation, and accordingly a large number of ground verification, and in a very short time to modify or even reprogramming the software to adjust the status is set in case the point of failure state change occurs (again)
It appears the Emergency team came up with three possible solutions for Yutu (Rabbit) to try and survive the second period of lunar darkness :-
1) front facing south
2) left and right side of body tilted first (?) to negative then (?) to positive alignment
3) folded solar wings and mast
However, it seems none of these conditions were (able to be ? ) met in time before Yutu would enter the second lunar night.
Therefore , a lot of ground analysis took place with computer programmes working out solar elevation angles for different time point and different solar wing angles to predict the possible lunar temperatures. For each scenario the test team developed contingency measures for most reliable solution . ( I get the impression these conditions were relayed
to Yutu before it entered the lunar night)
whilst Yutu enduring lunar night, the Emergency Teams were working on providing remedies for faults to provide to Yutu when it re-emerged into lunar day. They formulated a series of
plans for when/if Yutu responded. (They noted that solar wing cannot be closed and Yutu has no (thermal ? ) blanket and cannot survive minus 150 C for long.
When Yutu re-emerged into lunar daylight on 12th February, they only received one carrier signal and no telemetry data . However, they followed a predetermined wakeup program , step by step, with such steps as "frequency lock", "uplink command issue", " receive real-time telemetry ", "power good" , "temperature normal "...and so on.
However,Yutu was stationary at this stage and though its payload devices worked properly the antenna was not able to move and therefore data could not be transmitted directly to Earth ground stations. However, it appears that designers had planned for such a anomaly by using a WiFi-UHF band transmission from Yutu to Change'3lander which would transmit the data to Earth. It appears that the distance between Yutu and Change'3 was less than 20 metres - less than the design distance. As a consequence, they were concerned that if the number of transmissions was too many, then the UHF band equipment may have "burned out". However, they had built-in large design margins and,as consequence, they received Yutu data.
Before the abnormal situation arose with Yutu it had traversed about 100 metres. Its four back body science instruments - panoramic camera, measured monthly radar, infrared imaging spectrometer and particle induced X-ray spectrometer - had collected a lot of useful scientific data. including a 360-degree panorama , radar probe to within 140 meters and 10 meters below the lunar surface shallow structure , Infrared Imaging Spectrometer of the visible lunar soil, shortwave infrared spectral image data and the particle induced X-ray spectrometry of lunar surface elements with the detection and identification of magnesium, aluminium, silicon, potassium, strontium, yttrium , zirconium and other 11 kinds of elements .
It appears that the Chinese hold preliminary "Controller (Masters) " classes of around one hour each class where team members discuss issues and suggest solutions .For instance, such a "brainstorming" in each class takes place before the Change III team thematic or technical analysis Coordination meeting is staged.
As a forward plan Controllers will make use of existing unconventional situations and harsh environments to gather more engineering data, as a means of "accumulating more valuable engineering data for future space-based research."
At 6:42 on March 14, 2014, ushered in the first four months of Yutu (Rabbit). In accordance with the work plan and related procedures, it will be transferred to the long-term management mode of the lunar rover.
Apollo-phill
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Any updates on Change;3 and Yutu ?
Oh China,China,China - you can do much much better on news updates on your space programme -good or bad news.
We mere mortals know its difficult to get things working successfully on the Moon (or elsewhere extra terrestially) so we will not think any worse of you if there are problems on some projects. In fact, who knows, we may be able help with advice etcetera ?
So,please, issue news more regularly :-))
A-P
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Change'3/Yutu area will not be sunlit again until 9th April 2014.
A-P
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Some neat new images of Chang'e-3 and Yutu testing that were posted to the China Space Facebook page.
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China's moon rover, Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, has already passed its design life-span of three months after landing on the moon last December, the Chengdu Business Daily reports.
Yu Dengyun, deputy chief engineer of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, said Tuesday that, although Yutu cannot move due to unresolved mechanical problems, it has not lost its [...snip...]
http://english.cri.cn/6909/2014/04/02/2361s820168.htm
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Its Change-3/Yutu "wake-up" time again.
Waiting see if Chinese release any information about regaining contact etcetera.
A-P
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First official yutu route map!
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Phil Stooke's summary (http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2014/0409-yutu-update.html) at The Planetary Society Blog.
...
But the rover did not arrive at the crater, or even reach the lander. It stopped as it was getting close to the lander, apparently because the electronics associated with moving its wheels and solar panels, so probably an important central control unit, failed at that point.
...
At any rate, it soon became apparent that the rover could neither move nor fold itself up to protect against the cold of the night.
...
After a seemingly interminable wait the sun rose again, and a few days later on 12 February both lander and rover woke up. Yutu was more robust than expected. All its instruments, even the fragile cameras, were fine, but it couldn’t move. I don’t know if the lack of movement extends to the robotic arm with the APXS.
...
The rover shut down near sunset on 23 February and woke up again on 13 March, three days after sunrise, but this time much more feebly. Nevertheless, intervention from Earth, I think in the form of a computer re-boot, again restored full operation.
...
Yu Dengyun, deputy chief engineer of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, said Tuesday that, although Yutu cannot move due to unresolved mechanical problems, it has not lost its [...snip...]
http://english.cri.cn/6909/2014/04/02/2361s820168.htm (http://english.cri.cn/6909/2014/04/02/2361s820168.htm)
So the electronic system problems were sorted out with the reboot, but the rover has a mechanical problem that prevents it from moving?
From the same CRI article
Yutu started its fourth dormancy on March 24. It's supposed to wake up around April 10 of this year.
However, Yu pointed out that it might need more resting time, since the rover cannot adjust its solar array to collect enough solar electric power quickly.
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Word is she's alive: http://www.guokr.com/post/581203/
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Yutu alive ?
I'd like see more proof of that other than a vague reference to today's lunar eclipse from some ground based operator typing the message.
And the route map ?
Could have been produced many weeks ago as I can see no date on it .
A-P
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The map ends in the second lunar day, i.e. January 2014. It's evident from numbering of points.
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So map was "..weeks ago..." in January 2014. Probably produced when they thought they had a "good,working Yutu" ?
I had expected far better news release information from the Chinese than what we seem to be getting ?
If news is being released - to their local Chinese community - that's fine since after all their local community is paying for it ! But the same information could be released to the press outside China . They made a good start with coverage of launch, landing and first few minutes of Yutu/Change'3 on lunar surface. But since,gone 'downhill'
So, OK they've had some bad days with various problems - some of which may still be outstanding - but let us in on it. I don't think anyone is going think "bad" of them for getting problems - the lunar environment is a harsh operating environment . Quite the reverse if they released information on how they are dealing with the problem by ,say , carrying out software workaround rewrites, ground simulation tests and frequent pre-telemetry command meetings then,if they did this - wow, that would be great. But, not to give any real significant information (good or bad) then we can only assume that Yutu is completely "dead" and they've given up on it and maybe working toward Change'4 - a re-run? But,if they are working on Change'4 and "walking away from" Change'3/Yutu without informing, then am I really interested and supportive of their next attempt ? No, not really, if the amount of information is going be on the same level as currently.
If humanity is going to go forward and deeper into the cosmos, we must do it as one species of human being (as the representative of our planet which has thousands if not millions of living creatures) . To do so, we must trust each other in interplanetary spaceflight events and we can only do that if information on interplanetary missions is shared openly.
So,please China space agency, share more information in a timely fashion - just like you did for your launch and initial landing phase. We - outside China - want to support you in your interplanetary endeavours.
A-P
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Well, if Yutu's alive, then they'd definitely want to take some pictures of the earth during today's eclipse (http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2009/02/20090218_kaguya_e.html), and probably release them. (Provided the camera's working too).
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http://www.stdaily.com/jbsj/yb/201404/t20140417_690814.shtml
对于“嫦娥”“玉兔”来说,这次日食发生时,它们才从月夜中唤醒没多久。仿佛刚到上午,天又黑了。杨宇光说,由于探测器所处区域被地球阴影覆盖了几个小时,会出现温度骤降的情况。但“嫦娥”“玉兔”原本就是按照月昼、月夜两种极限工况设计的,应对这样的温度不会有太大问题。
此外,日食期间探测器供电系统失去了太阳能,杨宇光认为,为避免出现能源问题,可以采取不做动作、关闭科学载荷等方式降低能耗。“就好比让‘嫦娥’‘玉兔’打个盹,睡个‘回笼觉’。”他说。
据悉,“嫦娥”“玉兔”已安全度过这次考验。
yutu have alive,but we don't know it took pictures or not
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http://www.stdaily.com/jbsj/yb/201404/t20140417_690814.shtml
对于“嫦娥”“玉兔”来说,这次日食发生时,它们才从月夜中唤醒没多久。仿佛刚到上午,天又黑了。杨宇光说,由于探测器所处区域被地球阴影覆盖了几个小时,会出现温度骤降的情况。但“嫦娥”“玉兔”原本就是按照月昼、月夜两种极限工况设计的,应对这样的温度不会有太大问题。
此外,日食期间探测器供电系统失去了太阳能,杨宇光认为,为避免出现能源问题,可以采取不做动作、关闭科学载荷等方式降低能耗。“就好比让‘嫦娥’‘玉兔’打个盹,睡个‘回笼觉’。”他说。
据悉,“嫦娥”“玉兔”已安全度过这次考验。
yutu have alive,but we don't know it took pictures or not
Thanks for sharing, Lsquirrel... Google Translate gave me this
Ball shadow covering a few hours, there will be situations temperature dips. But "Chang E" "rabbit" was originally accordance May Day, Moonlight two limiting conditions designed to cope with such temperatures would not be a big problem. In addition, the system loses power during a solar eclipse solar probe, Yang Yuguang that, to avoid the energy problem, you can do to take action to close the scientific payload and other ways to reduce energy consumption. "Like Let 'Chang E'' Rabbit' nap, sleep a 'return to sleep'." He said. It is reported that, "Chang E" "rabbit" safely through this ordeal.
Perhaps someone could give a better translation?
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and a dedicated issue of Scientia Sinica Technologica
http://tech.scichina.com:8082/sciE/CN/volumn/volumn_6847.shtml
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another dedicated issue,Scientia Sinica informationis:
http://info.scichina.com:8084/sciF/CN/volumn/volumn_6846.shtml
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http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1486425/last-ditch-efforts-salvage-mission-chinas-stricken-jade-rabbit-lunar
What the headline says. Power circuitry is not usually designed to be very reconfigurable or reprogrammable, so slim chances.
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A new paper in Chinese: Chang’E-3 Lunar Rover’s Scientific Payloads (http://www.cjss.ac.cn/EN/abstract/abstract2038.shtml) is now published
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A new paper in Chinese: Chang’E-3 Lunar Rover’s Scientific Payloads (http://www.cjss.ac.cn/EN/abstract/abstract2038.shtml) is now published
Here it is attached.
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A new paper in Chinese: Chang’E-3 Lunar Rover’s Scientific Payloads (http://www.cjss.ac.cn/EN/abstract/abstract2038.shtml) is now published
Here it is attached.
Thanks Blackstar!
Although the paper body is in Chinese, the abstract is in English as are the diagrams so some interesting info can be gleaned by non Chinese speakers...
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I just heard some information third-hand. Not sure if it has been reported here. I'll just say that I got it from somebody who recently talked to a senior Chinese space official who said that they now think that the rover mobility problem may have been caused by a rock that may have severed a key electronic cable.
Anybody else seen anything like that in the Chinese accounts of the mission?
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I have no inside knowledge, but it does sound like a very plausible theory. The MERs had a lot of external cabling, and given the similarities of the designs, it would not be surprising if Yutu did as well.
Plus, the Moon's low gravity means that Yutu must have thrown up much more rocks than the MERs would have on Mars.
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UHF Satcom https://twitter.com/uhf_satcom is reporting detection of Yutu again! (carrier only for the moment)
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Plus, the Moon's low gravity means that Yutu must have thrown up much more rocks than the MERs would have on Mars.
But Yutu's also smaller isn't it? I'm not saying it's not a plausible theory, but I don't think it would've been because of a rock thrown up by the wheels. These rovers are not exactly ripping along the terrain... so any rock (or gravel) small enough to get kicked up, won't have the energy to shear through a cable. Something large enough wouldn't get lifted up in the first place.
Maybe they drove over some protrusion, snagged a cable, and yanked it out of a socket? (Seems more likely to me than a cable getting "cut").
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small enough to get kicked up, won't have the energy to shear through a cable. Something large enough wouldn't get lifted up in the first place.
The way it was described to me was that it may have somehow gotten into the rover and between moving parts where it acted like a knife, cutting through a cable. So maybe a pretty small piece.
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a rare update from Xinhua http://www.icrosschina.com/news/2014/0528/363.shtml
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The China Space FB group has today posted a very nice picture of the large triangular rock that Yutu was driving towards. I have not seen this elsewhere.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t1.0-9/10423795_737090639685273_8172128033035313925_n.jpg
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it has been discussed at some length in unmannedspaceflight this week http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=7758&view=findpost&p=210226
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The China Space FB group has today posted a very nice picture of the large triangular rock that Yutu was driving towards. I have not seen this elsewhere.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t1.0-9/10423795_737090639685273_8172128033035313925_n.jpg
the nature paper:
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Chang'e-5 capsule.
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the CE-5 demo mission has been discussed here: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=34162.0
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By the way, @uhf_satcom posts updates now and then about still being able to receive Yutu signal now and then.
The rover is talking, would be interesting to be able to decode what is it saying
https://twitter.com/uhf_satcom/status/477588573404008450
Awesome! Yutu rover is in full chat mode with data on 8462.0605MHz! FFT at http://pjm.uhf-satcom.com/twtr/yutu_130614.jpg … - great to see it downlinking data again!
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a paper have been published in copuos2014:
Chinese Lunar Exploration Program
http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/pdf/pres/copuos2014/tech-06.pdf
something about Chang'e-3:
During the day time of the first 4 months, the Lander got 118.5GB original detecting data.
Extreme ultraviolet camera:Obtained more than 600 images in total.
Lunar-based astronomical telescop:Observe the brightness and variances at near-UV band for various celestial bodies. Up till now, more than 32,000 images have been obtained.
The Patroller (Yutu) got 32GB original detecting data
current status:
The 6th moon night by May 23
The Lander is proper functioning
Patroller(Yutu) encountered control fault, part of the loading works normally
Under the abnormal condition and the extreme low temperature, the
patroller(Yutu)’s performances are gradually degenerated
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two new stories on Yutu courtesy of Xinhua:
http://www.icrosschina.com/insideout/2014/0620/690.shtml
http://www.icrosschina.com/profile/2014/0620/679.shtml
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Thanks plutogno. From the second article
"Jia’s next goal is Mars. “I hope before my retirement, the Chinese people can begin exploring Mars. I hope we can send a rover, better than Yutu, to Mars.”"
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Here are some images of the Chang'e 3 7500 N variable thrust engine. Looks like they are using a pintle type motor. From
J.P. Lei, X.H. Lan, R.J. Zhang and W. Chen, "The development of 7500 N variable thrust engine for Chang’E-3," Science China Technological Sciences, vol. 44, pp. 569-575, 24 June 2014.
http://tech.scichina.com:8082/sciE/CN/volumn/volumn_6889.shtml#
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http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/07211715-change-3-update-still-alive.html
"I'm curious what will happen to the Chang'e-2-like spacecraft after it's separated from the return capsule! Watch that thread on NASAspaceflight.com for more news. In the meantime, here's a photo of the Chang'e 5 return capsule."
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There is an exhibition about Chang'e 3 (as well as the orbiters #1/2) right now at the Hong Kong Science Museum, which has some big models of the lander and rover, as well as some back up hardware of the science instruments on display. I took some photos yesterday and I shall put them up here shortly. ;)
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an update in Chinese (http://"http://news.xinhuanet.com/tech/2014-09/04/c_1112367913.htm") on Yutu and Chang'e 3: Yutu is about to enter its 10th lunar day and four instruments are operating normally (camera, radar, APXS, IR spectrometer).
"The lander current physical condition is very good."
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according to @uhf_satcom,yutu's signals have been received,loud and clear,it's awake
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Frustrating!
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I feel like the main reason it's surviving as long as it has been is because it's been crippled - thus not moving around and wearing itself down. Just sitting still like it has been though, and nothing's really wearing out.
Still, I'd rather have a shorter-lifetime mobile rover than an infinitely prolonged, immobile, and almost-unusable one...
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another paper just published in English: Orbit determination of Chang’E-3 and positioning of the lander and the rover
http://www.scibull.com:8080/EN/abstract/abstract509343.shtml
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This looks interesting. Anybody in Toronto at the IAC?
http://www.iafastro.net/iac/paper/id/26702/summary/
"overview of china cheng’e – 3 mission and development of follow-on mission"
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Okay, got the above paper. It is attached here.
The follow-on section doesn't seem to say anything new. I'd like to know what is the next mission and the sequence of missions leading to sample return. Are they going to re-fly the rover like with CE-3, or just jump straight to sample return?
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thanks for sharing. you are right, it is puzzling that they write:
The second phase of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program has been completed, and the third phase is in progress. The engineering goal of the third phase is to realize unmanned sample return from the lunar surface.
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My understanding of this is that Chang'E 4 will be a rover mission which will test the sample acquisition hardware for Chang'E 5 on the lunar surface (and possibly try to overcome the problems faced by Yutu), launching in 2016 and probably sent to a destination in Oceanus Procellarum where the sample return will also be targeted. A likely specific location would be the youngest known basalt flows, south of Aristarchus.
Phil
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latest from Xinhua
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-10/10/c_127083174.htm
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That article says:
"As the backup probe of Chang'e-3, Chang'e-4 will verify technology for Chang'e-5. The more sophisticated Chang'e-5/6 missions are aimed for tasks including unmanned sampling and returning to Earth.
China plans to launch an experimental recoverable moon orbiter before the end of this year to test technology vital for the success of Chang'e-5."
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this just out: The preliminary processing and analysis of LPR Channel-2B data from Chang’E-3 (http://phys.scichina.com:8083/sciGe/EN/abstract/abstract509416.shtml)
it also includes a detailed route map for Yutu
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Here's a little bit more. Do we know for sure that they have been unable to close it up every night to stay warm? If they cannot do that and yet the rover is still alive that indicates a pretty robust design.
http://www.leonarddavid.com/chinas-yutu-moon-rover-health-status/
"“Yutu has gone through freezing lunar nights under abnormal status, and its functions are gradually degrading,” Yu told Xinhua.
China’s Chang’e 3 mission – a lander and rover – touched down on the lunar surface in mid-December of 2013."
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wow! an amazingly detailed paper: High precision landing site mapping and rover localization for Chang'e-3 mission (http://phys.scichina.com:8083/sciGe/EN/abstract/abstract509496.shtml)
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start downloading!
the dedicated Chang'e 3 issue of Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics is finally available:
http://www.raa-journal.org/raa/index.php/raa/issue/view/81
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Thanks for that link.:)
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I grabbed a bunch of those documents, but not all. There is one that is 21 megs and I cannot upload it here. Anybody else who wants to fill in the blanks be my guest.
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Tomorrow, December 14th, 2014, it will be a year since Chang'E 3 landed on the Moon and the Chinese are still in contact with it and Yutu - although Yutu has been stuck since early this year.
That means that this is the longest-lasting unmanned lunar surface mission. Congratulations to China!
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That means that this is the longest-lasting unmanned lunar surface mission. Congratulations to China!
..are you saying that a manned mission has lasted longer ? Apollo retroreflectors!
:)
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That means that this is the longest-lasting unmanned lunar surface mission. Congratulations to China!
..are you saying that a manned mission has lasted longer ? Apollo retroreflectors!
:)
I deliberately said "unmanned" because the ALSEP and EALSEP packages were part of the manned programme and deployed by humans.
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yep, I figured. they get you every time
http://xkcd.com/1441/
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Do we really know they are still in contact? There was no evidence of communication from this source:
7 December 2014:
UHF Satcom
@uhf_satcom Once again, nothing from the Moon re: Yutu and Chang'e'3 - only thermal noise detected, and no signs of the 7GHz uplink via EME ;-(
(and previous tweets over the preceding month or more)
Phil
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If you are going to include retroreflectors then the Lunokhods are still active.
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If the Chinese were in contact with Chang'e 3 and/or Yutu after mid-October then they broke the Lunokhod 1 duration record. I thought that we still had some low level contact with Chang'E.
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and an update on the mission. seems to be still alive...
Chang’e-3 lander continues work after finishing scheduled tasks (http://www.ecns.cn/cns-wire/2014/12-15/146672.shtml)
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meanwhile, as linked on unmannedspaceflight.com, there has been a release of assorted lander and rover pics
http://moon.bao.ac.cn/multimedia/img2dce3.jsp
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Also, Chinese Chang'e data release system ( i.e. their PDS ) at http://moon.bao.ac.cn seemed to be down for a while, but now i noticed some Chang'e-3 specific pages are up
http://moon.bao.ac.cn/ceweb/datasrv/datalistce3.jsp
Seem to be published only over last few days. Not sure if you can actually access any without explicit access request/permission.
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Here's a panorama I've created using what looks to me like lander images showing the nearby crater. I've slightly enhanced the exposure, and marginally sharpened it. This panorama is a quick and dirty Autostitch version, and I will shortly post a full-resolution one made with Stitcher 2009.
The panorama displays the 'Surveyor 7' problem if you look closely (as do all the Chinese-generated panoramas issued to date, with exposure marginally lighter on one side of each image, resulting in a vertical stripe effect across the whole sequence). I will play with Photoshop to see if this can be corrected.
Interestingly, the original images at http://moon.bao.ac.cn/multimedia/img2dce3.jsp reveal a series of hot pixels in the images, all in the same places across the swathe of images. It'd be interesting to chart their progression as time elapsed - presumably, there were more and more damaged elements on the sensor.
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Wish You Were Here
Here's a first stab at a 3D anaglyph from the images; there are also several which look like they'd make happy little jerky animations.
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And here's a slightly de-fisheyed version of the HazCam (I presume) image:
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By the way:
http://www.lsgi.polyu.edu.hk/staff/Bo.Wu/publications/Wu_2014_CE-3%20Landing%20Site%20Mapping%20and%20Analysis.pdf
Found this from Bo Wu's website here : http://www.lsgi.polyu.edu.hk/staff/Bo.Wu/
According to the research history (http://www.lsgi.polyu.edu.hk/staff/Bo.Wu/research_projects.htm) he got to practice a bit with ExoMars and LRO, before figuring out Chang'e-3
There is also this one that details post-integration of landing camera images into the local topographic map
http://www.int-arch-photogramm-remote-sens-spatial-inf-sci.net/XL-4/157/2014/isprsarchives-XL-4-157-2014.pdf
CE-3 began to descent from the lunar orbit at an altitude of around 15 km, and when it was about 2 km above the lunar surface, the descent camera fixed at the bottom of CE-3 started to take images. During the descending phase, hovering and obstacle avoidance and landing phase (see Figure 4), CE-3
descent camera acquired totally 4,672 images with a resolution higher than 1 m within an area of 1*1 km and as high as 0.1 m within a range of 50 m from the landing point (Liu et al. 2014).
EDIT: and one more, attached. Talking about Chinese version of Delta-DOR tracking technique they are using ( Related Chang'e-3 abstract here (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11434-014-0542-9) )
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Having looked long and hard at the anaglyph I created, I see little in the way of 3D, sad to say...
My first attempt at a *big* Stitcher 2009 panorama failed, as the program requires source images of the same dimensions. I found it impossible to directly download the images from the Chinese website, so had to grab the pictures from the screen, resulting in slight image size variations. I'll sort that out in the next day or so, and should post a *large* panorama thereafter.
The rocks around the crater rim are quite fascinating - tabular, veined and with striking glints. I wish we could see the full-res images!
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Chang'e-3 have took a photo of M101 galaxy on december 2,2014
LUT on Lander have been working well to the end of design life(12months/1 year)
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CE-3 is pretty much alive and just went into hibernation for the 14th time
http://www.sastind.gov.cn/n112/n117/c467119/content.html
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this just out (in Chinese): Thermal Control Design for Topography Camera of Chang'e-3 Under High Temperature Environment of Lunar Surface (http://http://zgkj.cast.cn/EN/abstract/abstract10795.shtml)
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CE-3 is pretty much alive and just went into hibernation for the 14th time
http://www.sastind.gov.cn/n112/n117/c467119/content.html
This makes Chang'E 3 the longest-operating unmanned lunar spacecraft.
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uhf satcom has reported detection of Yutu these past days
http://pjm.uhf-satcom.com/twtr/yutu_030215a.jpg
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From People's Daily: China's moon rover Yutu functioning but stationary: Scientist (http://en.people.cn/n/2015/0303/c202936-8856459.html).
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So do we know what "functioning" actually means? Can it close up its systems for the night time? Do any of the moving parts work or are they all inactive and the only thing that works is the communications and electronics?
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Very nice paper in Science on results from Yutu's GPR and implications for the stratigraphy of Mare Imbrium http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6227/1226.abstract
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From Xinhua: China's Yutu rover reveals Moon's "complex" geological history (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-03/13/c_134062659.htm).
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That's from the Xiao paper, Figure 1. Descent image with LROC inset
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http://spacenews.com/chinas-mars-exploration-program-facing-delays/
"China is moving ahead with the sample return mission after the experience of its first lunar lander mission, Chang’e-3, which landed on the moon in December 2013. Despite technical problems with instruments on the lander, and mechanical problems that caused the lander’s small rover, Yutu, to stop moving about a month after landing, Wu said that mission was still viewed as a success.
Wu said that China had planned a second, similar lunar lander mission, called Chang’e-4, as a backup to Chang’e-3. With the success of Chang’e-3, however, China has postponed plans for Chang’e-4. “Because Chang’e-3 was so successful, the Chinese space agency doesn’t want to launch Chang’e-4 anymore” because there was little that could be learned from it, he said.
Instead, China now plans to fly an upgraded Chang’e-4 after the sample return mission. Wu said the revised Chang’e-4 mission, now scheduled for 2020, will use a more powerful launch vehicle that will allow for a heavier spacecraft and feature a landing in a different region of the moon, including possibly the far side.
Wu suggested that China would be open to international collaboration on instruments for that mission. “If you have good ideas and can provide instruments, you’re welcome to join Chang’e-4,” he said."
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Is it about time that this thread get moved out of the live section and somewhere more appropriate? I don't know if that should be the science section or the Chinese section (although I cringe that the Chinese section is called "Chinese Launchers" and what is often discussed is not rockets but missions--the rocket is only important for about ten minutes and then the spacecraft can work for years).
I did hear some interesting information about this subject that I would like to add to the discussion. It's just that I don't think this mission is really appropriate for the live section. What do the rest of you think?
I agree with moving this one to the Science section and leave the launch thread where it is now (and I might even look into moving the Chang'e 1/2 threads as well, if others agree). ;)
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Is it about time that this thread get moved out of the live section and somewhere more appropriate? I don't know if that should be the science section or the Chinese section (although I cringe that the Chinese section is called "Chinese Launchers" and what is often discussed is not rockets but missions--the rocket is only important for about ten minutes and then the spacecraft can work for years).
I did hear some interesting information about this subject that I would like to add to the discussion. It's just that I don't think this mission is really appropriate for the live section. What do the rest of you think?
I agree with moving this one to the Science section and leave the launch thread where it is now (and I might even look into moving the Chang'e 1/2 threads as well, if others agree). ;)
Seems a sensible course of action to me.
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I got some interesting information. It comes from some good sources, although it is possible that they may misunderstand some aspects of it.
So one interesting bit of information is that apparently space sciences (Earth science, heliophysics and astronomy) is under the auspices of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. I don't know how that is run, but it is essentially led by the scientists. However, planetary science is done by the same people who do their human spaceflight program, and that's under a separate organization, which I believe is part of the People's Liberation Army. That organization does not really have many scientists working for it.
The result of this setup (and I admit that it could be across the board for their programs but maybe it is more acute for planetary science) is that the engineers are in the driver's seat for planetary, not the scientists. Apparently with their lunar program the engineers made the decisions and only late in the process did they involve the scientists. The way it was told to me was that they essentially handed the data to the scientists and told them to make sense of it. Until then, the scientists were not involved. This is decidedly not how NASA and ESA do things and the Chinese think this is a problem and would like to find a way to put the scientists more in charge.
The other thing is that apparently the Chinese are going to reorganize and their planetary program is going to come under the CAS like the other space sciences. That will create an organization more like NASA's Science Mission Directorate (although I have no idea about their actual infrastructure and capabilities).
So one of the interesting things to me is that their lunar program has so far not really been run for scientific purposes but for engineering purposes. That's consistent with what I have assumed (and wrote about). But it was interesting to have this confirmed.
Hopefully the scientists will be heavily involved in selecting the landing site for CE-5. It would be good to have it go to a high value site rather than something the engineers want to do.
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This is mostly about the CE-5T1 mission, but I think it has relevance here. I see CE-3, 4, 5 and 5T1 to be all closely linked:
China’s Circumlunar Mission: New Details
By Leonard David
March 29th, 2015
http://www.leonarddavid.com/chinas-circumlunar-mission-new-details/
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So one of the interesting things to me is that their lunar program has so far not really been run for scientific purposes but for engineering purposes. That's consistent with what I have assumed (and wrote about). But it was interesting to have this confirmed.
Hopefully the scientists will be heavily involved in selecting the landing site for CE-5. It would be good to have it go to a high value site rather than something the engineers want to do.
There have been hundreds of papers published already so clearly science is a major part of the program.
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So one interesting bit of information is that apparently space sciences (Earth science, heliophysics and astronomy) is under the auspices of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. I don't know how that is run, but it is essentially led by the scientists. However, planetary science is done by the same people who do their human spaceflight program, and that's under a separate organization, which I believe is part of the People's Liberation Army. That organization does not really have many scientists working for it.
there was an interesting article on the subject of who's in control of Chinese space science a few years ago in Nature:
"China forges ahead in space"
http://www.nature.com/news/china-forges-ahead-in-space-1.9359
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there was an interesting article on the subject of who's in control of Chinese space science a few years ago in Nature:
"China forges ahead in space"
http://www.nature.com/news/china-forges-ahead-in-space-1.9359
Yeah, so that 2011 article says this:
"And ambitious moves on the ground suggest that China will increasingly be able to develop and launch its probes without partnering with other nations. In July, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing opened its National Space Science Center (NSSC), which will take charge of overall planning for the country’s space science. “China was a space country without a space science programme,” says Ji Wu, the centre’s director. Now that the CAS “has got government support to manage space science missions as a series”, he says, “it will lead to a new era for space science in China”.
The problem is that most space science except for planetary went over to the CAS (and their NSSC). But planetary stayed where it was, essentially co-existing with the human spaceflight program. The Chinese are planning to transfer it to the CAS sometime soon. But CE-3, for instance, was not developed/conceived by the CAS. That's what I was referring to up-thread. It's sort of two sides of the same coin: the planetary program as a whole is not run by the science organization, and the engineers (and not scientists) have been calling the shots for the planetary program.
Yeah, there may be a lot of papers published from those missions, but that is after the data is crunched, it does not mean that the scientists selected and designed the instruments and the mission.
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dunno how reliable this is, but concerning Yutu's problem this link states, in a Google translation:
Last year, when a fault, the rabbit has done a good mission. We speculate that a wire is small stones hurt, causing the battery voltage of 5 volts from the original down to 4.5 volts. We think a lot of ways, but still can not recover.
http://dzb.jinbaonet.com/html/2015-04/15/content_281970.htm
so it would appear that a rock clipped some wire, and the batteries (solar panels?) could no longer provide the necessary voltage.
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dunno how reliable this is, but concerning Yutu's problem this link states, in a Google translation:
Last year, when a fault, the rabbit has done a good mission. We speculate that a wire is small stones hurt, causing the battery voltage of 5 volts from the original down to 4.5 volts. We think a lot of ways, but still can not recover.
http://dzb.jinbaonet.com/html/2015-04/15/content_281970.htm
so it would appear that a rock clipped some wire, and the batteries (solar panels?) could no longer provide the necessary voltage.
Perhaps "small stones hurt" is "abraded by grit" ?
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dunno how reliable this is, but concerning Yutu's problem this link states, in a Google translation:
Last year, when a fault, the rabbit has done a good mission. We speculate that a wire is small stones hurt, causing the battery voltage of 5 volts from the original down to 4.5 volts. We think a lot of ways, but still can not recover.
http://dzb.jinbaonet.com/html/2015-04/15/content_281970.htm
so it would appear that a rock clipped some wire, and the batteries (solar panels?) could no longer provide the necessary voltage.
Perhaps "small stones hurt" is "abraded by grit" ?
去年出故障的时候,玉兔已经很好地完成了使命。我们推测,可能是一根导线被小石头伤到了,导致电池电压从原来的5伏降到了4.5伏以下。我们想了很多办法,但还是不能恢复。
No, the original article clearly says a wire is suspected of being damaged by a small rock. If it grit, they will use the character 沙.
Looks like the power system need more redundancy.
Also the interesting about Chang'e 4 in the article is that C4 will involve more risk taking and perform more valuable tasks compared to C3, in the same way C2 did compare to C1. So my guess is that it will be a primarily a science mission rather than a engineer validation mission. Would be interesting see what they come up with.
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I was surprised to read, catching up to some topics, that Yutu is still alive and talking.
March 9, 2015, http://www.spaceflight101.com/change-3-mission-updates.html
https://twitter.com/uhf_satcom/status/573237795814301697
How the instruments fared in the second half of 2014 is unknown, but the core systems of Yutu – its main computer and communications system – kept operating well past the expected duration of three months. Signals from Yutu could be received by radio operators on Earth almost every lunar day as the Chinese mission team kept operating the rover to learn valuable lessons for future robotic missions to the Moon and other targets.
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I was surprised to read, catching up to some topics, that Yutu is still alive and talking.
March 9, 2015, http://www.spaceflight101.com/change-3-mission-updates.html
https://twitter.com/uhf_satcom/status/573237795814301697
How the instruments fared in the second half of 2014 is unknown, but the core systems of Yutu – its main computer and communications system – kept operating well past the expected duration of three months. Signals from Yutu could be received by radio operators on Earth almost every lunar day as the Chinese mission team kept operating the rover to learn valuable lessons for future robotic missions to the Moon and other targets.
Robust little rover.
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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?
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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
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Yutu is still beeping, as of Nov 25
https://twitter.com/uhf_satcom/status/669618119921557510
https://twitter.com/uhf_satcom/status/669265656248946688
https://twitter.com/uhf_satcom/status/669266269187764227
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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
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Chang'e-3 landing site named "Guang Han Gong" (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-01/05/c_134980117.htm)
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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.
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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 (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 (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 :)
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China's moon lander Chang'e-3 enters 28th lunar day (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-02/20/c_135114537.htm).
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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 (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
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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 (http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MTI0MDU3NDYwMQ==&mid=2656530665&idx=4&sn=2edbfb5168994882b828b3c430f551be&scene=0#wechat_redirect) (the personalized one nonetheless)...... :-X
EDIT: Scratch that, it was mentioned on CCTV: http://tv.cctv.com/2016/07/31/VIDEJ3mHYDYOwFawtokytYKC160731.shtml (http://tv.cctv.com/2016/07/31/VIDEJ3mHYDYOwFawtokytYKC160731.shtml)
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any indication of when exactly did thid happen?
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I also didn't understand if the stationary lander is still alive
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https://www.newscientist.com/article/2099696-chinas-jade-rabbit-moon-rover-dead-after-31-months-on-surface/?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Facebook&utm_term=Autofeed&cmpid=SOC%7cNSNS%7c2016-Echobox#link_time=1470244663
RIP Yutu.
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Yutu probably not dead.
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2016/08100543-yutu-is-not-dead-probably.html
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New achievements from CE-3 mission
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11433-016-9009-6
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Chang'e-3 still kicking and will be for a while
http://gbtimes.com/china/chinas-telescope-moon-still-working-and-could-do-30-years
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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
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.
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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.
(http://edgarkaiser.homepage.t-online.de/Change3_09012018_0055_8496.000_carrier-first-then-data_.jpg)
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So Chang'e is working for more than four years on the Moon. Is it already a record?
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It is the longest surviving lander - still doing science with its UV telescope, the only functioning instrument. The actual longest operating equipment of any kind on the lunar surface was the Apollo 12 ALSEP, parts of which operated from late 1969 to the turn-off in 1977.
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The retroreflectors placed during the Apollo missions and also (I think) a Lunakhod mission still work fine.
Matthew
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Well, yes, the reflectors. What should prevent them from working? Probably just the project budgets down here on earth to use them.
Chang'e-3 is an active system. She is taking measurements and pictures and she is actively transmitting to earth.
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The Chang'e-3 lander is active again. I observed carrier and data signals on 8496 MHz and 8470 MHz on Feb 5 and Feb 7. Signal characteristics are similar to those shown in my posts from January. Yutu remains silent.
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Chang'E 3 is still alive.
https://gbtimes.com/the-change-3-lunar-lander-is-still-waking-up-after-nearly-five-years-on-the-moon
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Chang'e-3, still functioning, has been commanded to hibernate while Chang'e-4 lands.
https://twitter.com/AJ_FI/status/1074752450026971136
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Now imagine if CE3 had a seismometer. Some very long baseline data could have been collected. I hope the Chinese consider this for their future missions.
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Chang'e 3 is active again: https://twitter.com/df2mz/status/1106984044510801921
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Still active after 7 years:
https://twitter.com/AJ_FI/status/1375376171647504384
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https://twitter.com/df2mz/status/1397085736688619520