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

[Phil Stooke]

The latest update of my Moon map showing all nearside artifact locations. This might need updating quite often in the next few years... starting with a LADEE impact in the spring.

Phil

[elakdawalla]

I didn't realize until I was sorting through my screen grabs from yesterday that there were two different photos of Yutu returned from the lunar surface. There's a significant amount of shadow motion between the two, and a small shift in the vertical position of the rover mast.

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[nprev]

Great map. Phil!

The only critique I'd offer is that you might consider choosing a color other than black for the 'other nations' category; it's a bit difficult to pick out from the lunar map background. Green or yellow?

[ustrax]

Here it is:
http://i.picasion.com/pic76/d84f6711074d50...b1b52915a49.gif

[Cosmic Penguin]

Anyone here willing to find possible points of interests for the rover to head for within 10 km of the landing site using the LRO maps?

[Explorer1]

The weird crater at the bottom center of the second image on this page? Around four km to the south of the landing site, I guesstimate.
It looks bizarre, very different from its neighbors of the same size. Unusually fresh perhaps?
But going north for the titanium geology is probably a better option....

[Phil Stooke]

I never could resist a challenge like that.

Here is a path that starts out by looking at several craters along the way (also 'crater-hopping' like this is a good way to keep track of where you are). Then it crosses the geological contact between two basalt flows, examines a very fresh impact crater and finally gets to an interesting mare ridge. The ridge would offer chances to use the GPR to examine its structure in several places.

Phil

PS welcome back Ustrax!

PS2 - there was talk of us being in a hiatus, Dec. 16-23, during the hottest part of the lunar day, so maybe a few days without pics.

[vikingmars]

Wow ! That's a +/- 15 km trek ! This is a great idea Phil : I hope they could do it.
Anyway, CONGRATULATIONS to our Chinese "Moonrakers" !!!

[4th rock from th...]

I didn't realize until I was sorting through my screen grabs from yesterday ...

I tried to stack those grabs with higher resolution versions (from www.news.cn) and indeed the higher resolution versions are photographs of a screen.
They cover less area than the screen grabs and have geometrical distortion (skew, field curvature and vignetting).

So I'd say that the TV grabs are being generated from the digital data. The geometry and levels are consistent.

Here's the stack of both TV frames. I corrected gamma and color balance so that the surface is neutral brown and pushed color saturation a bit to account for overexposure.
The main thing is that the ground color does tend towards grey, as expected (even more if you reduce saturation). The other hues are within what's expected for raw uncalibrated images.

[Phil Stooke]

"Wow ! That's a +/- 15 km trek ! "


Yes, maybe a bit long. To keep it to 10 km Yutu could aim for the other fresh crater and meet the contact at the same place. But no ridge...

Phil

[dilo]

Correct me if I'm wrong, no updates nor new pictures were released in last 2 days...

[djellison]

This thread already includes an explanation

From Phil
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=205662
" there was talk of us being in a hiatus, Dec. 16-23, during the hottest part of the lunar day, so maybe a few days without pics. "

[Explorer1]

They're probably erring on the side of caution, after what happened to Chandrayaan and its heating issues.

[bobik]

There is also a Lunar Dust Integrated Load Measuring Instrument (月尘测量仪的综合载荷) on board of the Chang'e 3 lander. It seems to be viewed as engineering rather than scientific experiment.

http://210.14.113.38:9080/asop/login.asop?titleId=375

除了刚才苏总讲的有几个科学载荷之外，还做了月尘测量仪的综合载荷，月面上到底有多少月尘，包括由于着陆引起的，包括巡视器行走引起的，这些都是没有研究 清楚的问题，我们做了这样的一个载荷，装在着陆器上，用一年的时间接月尘，我们通过回传的数据来分析，这一年的时间，随着时间的变化，会积累多少月尘，这 样对后期的工程和科学探测都会提供很好的基础。　[15:48:21]

[vikingmars]

[quote name='djellison' date='Dec 18 2013, 07:03 AM' post='205692']

Agree ...and also, because knowing very well our Chinese friends,
(i) they do not have the same kind of "live" outreach policy as we have in the USA and in Europe and
(ii) maybe they are waiting for a big Press conference showing science results to reveal more images to the public, including a full 360° imaging pan.

They have already shown us their willingness for an open-minded outreach policy in showing us live the descent of Change-E on the Lunar surface. I think they are now also taking more into account our cultural need for "instant science".
So, let's be patient and wait a little bit more...