Chang'e 3 landing and first lunar day of operations, Including landing site geology and localization Options

[kenny]

LRO will make repeated observations of the Chang'e 3 landing site to overview surface changes from the descent engine blast and rover movements.

LRO observations of Chang'e 3

[kenny]

Despite the lack of new images, all was apparently working well yesterday, according to Xinhua...

SIX out of the eight pieces of scientific equipment deployed to the moon with the Chang'e-3 lunar mission have been activated by scientists and are functioning
properly, according to scientists working on the mission.

Speaking at a news conference on Tuesday, scientists said that the equipment aboard the Yutu lunar rover and the Chang'e-3 lander had so far been functioning
as hoped, despite the unexpectedly rigorous conditions of the lunar environment.

"Except for the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer and the visible and near-infrared imaging spectrometer, the instruments have all been activated and are
undergoing tests and adjustments," said Su Yan, deputy designer of the Chang'e-3 ground applications system.

Zhang He, deputy designer of the probe, said though the temperature disparity is greater than scientists had anticipated, all the equipment on the moon is
in "perfect" condition, and optical and ultraviolet-imaging experiments are under way.

Xinhua Chang'e Update 18 Dec

[dilo]

At this point, two considerations arise to me.
First one, if such cautionary stop around local noon will be adopted also in the next two lunar days, effective time available for roving/exploring will be very limited... perhaps no more than 25% of total mission time, less than 22 terrestrial days (considering also the obvious stop during local night).
Second consideration is about next mission. Based on article, "Given the success of Chang'e-3, the Chang'e-4, a backup probe, will be upgraded and serve as a prototype for the technologies being used in the Chang'e-5"; so, if I correctly understand, the planned launch of sister probe Chang'e-4 in 2014 will never come!
On the bright side, it seems that next year we will see two total sun eclipses from moon, at least from the lander! http://www.universetoday.com/

[Phil Stooke]

I think it's more likely the launch of Chang'E 4 will come - I expect it in 2015, and I expect it to test sampling technology, improved rover autonomous navigation, maybe better thermal control etc.

Phil

[Paolo]

wow!
http://v.qq.com/cover/c/ctklokz7zk0a9y3.ht...v8&start=31
Yutu is on the move...

[SpaceListener]

Initially, the spaceship Change'e-4 was planned as a backup of ones' e-3. However, the possibility that the Change'e-4 will perform will depend upon to how successfull is the mission of Change'e-3 on Moon. Thus, the Chinese space agency has showed to be very patient and meticulous with their programs, he only repeats when the mission has not attained according to their plans.

It would be interesting that Chang'e-4 land on another interesting site with much improved the landing precision such as why the Chang'e-3 has not landed close to the Laplace A Crater and ridges as initially. At this point, I don't know if present landing site, close to Laplace FA was as planned or not.

[4th rock from th...]

The video link posted above shows a panorama. Strange release: a video pan of a panorama!
From the footage it looks like a full 360º and with nice quality too.

[Phil Stooke]

Very low-res view of our site:



Phil

[craigmcg]

I'll say...

[Phil Stooke]

And some screenshots... better resolution this time!

Phil

[Thorsten Denk]

Early wakeup from the Siesta!

China's Yutu "naps", awakens and explores

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.

[...]

"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.

Thorsten

[Phil Stooke]

Not the greatest material to work with but here's a quick attempt to pull a pan together:



and a circular version:



Phil

PS that very low res pan above was made from the circular panorama that flashes up on the screen in the video. I uncircularized it but as the original was bad the pan was too.

[wildespace]

Great job! Can anyone please upload this panorama to Photosynth? If not, I'll try to do it myself.

[kenny]

Fuzzy but still great, Phil, compared with the continuously moving version we saw on TV. There's the big triangular boulder we saw on the descent movie to
the south of the lander, and the rocky far wall of the big crater just west of the landing site.

I'm looking forward to seeing some high-res, but they don't seem to have a scientific web site for the release of photos and it's mostly done through the
news agency route, which means that the criteria for "newsworthiness" is somewhat random.

[4th rock from th...]

Not the greatest material to work with but here's a quick attempt to pull a pan together...

Doesn't seem to improve upon the overhead views, but that's expected working from streaming video.

Anyway, here's a link with some new video stills from the pan:
http://www.ecns.cn/visual/hd/2013/12-21/29901.shtml
They are all zooms and photos of the same big display.



BUT a search using chinese characters turned good stuff!

Some decent images from the deployment sequence. Not raw but close, including stereo pairs and landing sequence final frames.


More here: http://chn.chinamil.com.cn/jdtp/2013-12/15...ent_5691236.htm



It looks like original data:

Original here: http://news.sohu.com/20131221/n392176417.shtml