Chang'e 3: Lunar Day 3 and onwards, Ongoing discussion of the Rover/Lander mission Options

[Phil Stooke]

Revisiting the interpretation of Yutu tracks seen by LRO... this is a blow-up of the LRO image with the tracks and stops shown at LPSC. Red dots are stops between drives and blue dots are the sites of the main science activities.

The map shown at LPSC ended before Yutu drove to its final location as revealed by LRO, but not much before, as you can see.

There may be some small improvements to come, as I have seen reprojected images which fine-tune the route in the south, but basically this can be taken as nearly the final word on the route.

I will put together a more complete map later in the route map section.

Phil

[Paolo]

a short news story including the LPSC results: China's Moon rover awake but immobile

[Explorer1]

Since this seems to be the Chinese equivalent of Pathfinder/Sojourner, we should be looking forward to their MERs next time...

[Liss]

The map shown at LPSC ended before Yutu drove to its final location as revealed by LRO, but not much before, as you can see.

Nice to see the LRO tracks confirmed.

Meanwhile, 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.

I stick to my earlier guess: Yutu lost the capability of moving between Jan 14 and Jan 21, hence couldn't met conditions (1) and (2).

[Phil Stooke]

Even if they could not move, in an effort to keep alive at all costs they would still have folded the mast and closed the folding panel if they could, so I expect that capability is also lost.


Meanwhile... trying to put together information gleaned at LPSC: the route map I referred to earlier included a dashed line extending NNE past the lander and approaching the blocky-rimmed crater just north of the lander. The author told me that was the intended path of the drive before the failure, so I think the rover was not trying to reach the lander for diagnostic purposes as some have suggested. It was simply bypassing it on the way to the next target. And the speaker on Monday said the plan after that was to loop around to the northern rim of the large crater to the west, to look into it from that direction.

That speaker was originally going to talk about route planning for the rover (the abstract and a published paper had indicated two targets for possible visits, NE and SW of the lander). But that part of the talk was dropped.

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

Another goodie from today, a speaker showed the first views I've seen from the Hazcam, looking at APXS deployment on the surface on 24 December.

Phil

[kenny]

Nice, look forward to seeing that in due course.... any views of the pyramidal rock we've all been longing to see?

[Phil Stooke]

No, none at all, but there was a clear statement that the APXS was not used on any rocks, only on regolith. I might speculate that the big rock was found to be too steep-sided (or otherwise unsuitable) for APXS placement, so they turned north to get to the northern rocky crater to find a suitable rock.

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

Another update, in case anybody had not seen this:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=42839

http://iloa.org/media/Astronomy%20from%20the%20Moon_314.pdf

So... more than 22000 images from the ultraviolet telescope already. ILOA will have a small telescope on the first Moon Express lander in 2015 as well, and China gets to share the use of it as ILOA gets to share the use of this Chinese telescope.

Phil

[Explorer1]

It's been two weeks and the Sun is up; no news from either component?
The eclipse is in a few days, even without pointing the cameras straight up to Earth the landscape lighting will be eerie...

[Liss]

Word is she's alive: http://www.guokr.com/post/581203/

[A.Nemo]

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。

after eclipse ,chang'e-3 & yutu still alive,but the news didn't comment eclipse photos

[A.Nemo]

http://tech.scichina.com:8082/sciE/CN/volu...lumn_6847.shtml
chang'e-3 special issue
another issue:
http://info.scichina.com:8084/sciF/CN/volu...lumn_6846.shtml

[Phil Stooke]

I have heard nothing, even from https://twitter.com/uhf_satcom that suggests any contact at all with the lander or the rover during the most recent lunar day.

Phil

[Paolo]

UHF Satcom is reporting detection of Yutu again! (carrier only for the moment)