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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Chang'e program _ future Chang'e landing sites

Posted by: Paolo Apr 24 2016, 06:44 AM

this paper is in Chinese, but it surely is of interest to other UMSFers (and especially Phil Stooke):
http://219.238.6.215/publisher/scp/journal/SSPMA/46/2/10.1360/SSPMA2015-00507

QUOTE

In this study, 18 candidate landing sites, 5 on the nearside, 5 on the farside and 8 at the polar regions, have been recommended

Posted by: Phil Stooke Apr 24 2016, 05:38 PM

Yes indeed! I'm salivating like the fountains at Versailles.

I know the first author personally and spoke to him at LPSC. He will be busy soon with a planetary science meeting in Wuhan, which should be interesting. He has been proposing the Rumker plateau in northern Oceanus Procellarum as a Chang'E 5 landing site, but I suspect the landing will really take place in the young mare basalts south of Aristarchus. Somebody suggested the site would be 1000 km south of CE3, but that is in the Montes Carpatus near Copernicus and probably too rough, but if we don't assume 'south' means 'due south' the Aristarchus area is indeed south of CE3 and 1000 km away. We';; have to see.

This new list of sites is not an official shortlist, it is Long's list of suggestions. He told me the site selection process is not very formalized in China, with input from planetary scientists in a series of MSL-style workshops etc. Rather, a few people get together and come up with a site after a short deliberation. Long hopes that will change. Right now he is suggesting places which address various questions in lunar science, but whether any of them will get used is unclear.

Phil

PS thanks Paolo for all your alerts to new papers and other things, very useful indeed.