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

[Phil Stooke]

Blue flows in the image linked to are high Titanium.

Phil

[kenny]

Now THAT is jaw-dropping... the swear box may have to resurrected !
Although the main engine was supposed to cut out before the final drop, it looks like the smaller engines kept firing and blowing dust after touch down.
Best thing since the Apollo 17 descent movie of December 1972....

Note the giant boulder which is not far to the SW of the landing site. We can hope to see it later from the ground.

[ollopa]

Phil: Emily RT'd yesterday:

@BrownGeoSci prof Carle Pieters says Chang'e 3 landed in "some of the unsampled young hi-Ti basalts!"

I never found the original post, but can you (or others) point to a definitive discussion of the high/low Ti issue? Are "unsampled young hi-Ti basalts" a sufficient priority to the lunar community to justify a campaign of rovers and SRM's in this region?

Blue flows in the image linked to are high Titanium.

Phil

[OWW]

the landing video is now more conveniently on Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaQTSTrbT3w

Convenient yes, but also much more compressed than the one on the Chinese site. If you want a better copy, you will get much better quality by capturing the original (with Afterburner for example).

[Thorsten Denk]

This landing video, is it real time?
I tried to find out with the free fall time from 4 meters high with the engines off (2.2 sec),
but it's not clear when (or if) the engines stopped.

[Greenish]

Regarding Ti, lava, etc. this is very informative. From Jonathan McDowell on Twitter:
@planet4589: Good article by Paul Spudis on Imbrium selenology http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/2013/12/...re-on-the-moon/

[kenny]

I know we are not convinced by the inconsistent colours we are seeing from the different cameras, but brightness is a different matter.

Is anyone else intrigued by the unusual paleness, almost white, of the rocks around the crater rim behind Yutu?

[ollopa]

"The optical properties on the Moon are most peculiar"

Neil Armstrong talking to Patrick Moore: a masterclass in lunar surface colour perception.


The Sky at Night


I still can't believe they're both gone. Patrick died a year ago last week.

[dilo]

Neil Armstrong talking to Patrick Moore: a masterclass in lunar surface colour perception.
I still can't believe they're both gone.

At the end of the interview, Armstrong says he's "quite sure" he will see lunar stations built in his lifetime...

[Phil Stooke]

http://www.youtube.com/embed/QzZkF1MAsb8


The landing video rotated 180 degrees so you don't have to hang upside down off the bookcase to view it.

Phil

[vikingmars]

http://www.youtube.com/embed/QzZkF1MAsb8
The landing video rotated 180 degrees so you don't have to hang upside down off the bookcase to view it. Phil

How nice !!! Thanks a lot Phil !!!

[Phil Stooke]

You're welcome, Olivier.

The other equipment is being started up now, the radar, the UV telescope etc.

Phil

[kenny]

Paul Spudis of LPI likes the Mare Imbrium lava flows....

"...this site is actually more interesting geologically than the spacecraft’s original destination."

Paul Spudis on geology of the landing site

[gndonald]

Congratulations to China for their achievement.

[elakdawalla]

Folks, I've just done some long-overdue forum housekeeping: I created a new subforum for the Chang'e program.

I split the one very long Chang'e thread into four:

• The original thread is now for the Chang'e 1 and 2 orbiters.
• There is a thread for Chang'e 3 development through launch and orbit insertion.
• The thread you are in is the one for landing and first lunar day of operations; we'll start a new thread for the second lunar day of operations when that happens.
• There is also now a dedicated thread for Chang'e 5.
• And there is, as promised, a Yutu route map thread. The usual rules for that one apply -- no chit-chat in there, keep it clean for just route map updates.

When the Chang'e thread started, we only got very limited information out of China. It's wonderful we're getting so much information now to need this proliferation of forum topics