Fwd: China's Jade Rabbit Rover Basks in Lunar Bay of Rainbows

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: December 15, 2013 10:09:10 AM CST
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: China's Jade Rabbit Rover Basks in Lunar Bay of Rainbows

 

China's Chang'e-3 spacecraft lands on moon (UPDATED)

12/14/2013 04:50 PM Filed in: Space News | Planetary Exploration | Space Science | China

 

Editor's note...

    Posted at 09:30 AM EST, 12/14/13: Chinese spacecraft lands on moon

    Updated at 04:30 PM EST, 12/14/13: Rover lowered to surface, rolls off ramps onto lunar soil (replaces 6th graf; picksup 7th graf: "It's very difficult x x x)

 

By WILLIAM HARWOOD

CBS News

 

An unmanned Chinese spacecraft, carrying a suite of instruments and a small rover named Yutu, or "Jade Rabbit," settled to an on-target touchdown on the moon Saturday, the first such lunar landing in 37 years and a major achievement for the ambitious Chinese space program.

 

As the four-legged Chang'e-3 spacecraft descended to its landing site near Sinus Iridum, the Bay of Rainbows, a downward-pointing camera sent back pictures of the surface all the way through touchdown around 8:12 a.m. EST (GMT-5), prompting cheers and applause in China's mission control center. A few minutes later, the lander's two solar panels deployed.

 

Named after a mythical Chinese goddess, Chang'e-3 is the first Chinese spacecraft to land on another extraterrestrial body and the first moon lander since the former Soviet Union's Luna 24 sample return mission in 1976.

 

Chang'e-3 is equipped with a stereo imager, a telescope and an extreme ultraviolet camera for astronomical and Earth observations. Its solar panels provide electricity to power its systems while a radioisotope thermoelectric generator provides the heat needed to keep its electrical systems warm during the two-week-long lunar night.

 

The 265-pound Yutu rover, mounted atop the lander for the trip to the moon, is equipped with cameras and a ground-penetrating radar to probe the structure of the lunar crust to depths of up to 300 feet or so.

 

Several hours after landing, articulating ramps unfolded from the side of Chang'e-3 and extended out in front of the rover, which slowly rolled off the top of the lander and onto the so-called "transpositioning" mechanism.

 

Camera views from the lander, shown on Chinese television, showed the mechanism lowering the front end of the ramps to the surface. Yutu, its own solar panels extended, then slowly rolled off onto the lunar soil, prompting another round of applause in mission control.

 

"It's very difficult to soft land on the moon because there's no atmosphere," Ouyang Ziyuan, a senior advisor for China's lunar probe project, told CCTV before launch. "Previously the U.S. and the former Soviet Union both achieved this, but it was by either just a lander or just a rover.

 

"China will be the first country to land a rover and a lander on the moon at the same time. The lander will start working immediately after landing, by observing space using an optical telescope. So this will be a combined exploration of the moon by the lander and the rover."

 

The mission got underway Dec. 1 with a picture-perfect launch from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center aboard a Long March 3B rocket. After a five-day voyage, Chang'e-3 braked into an initial 62-mile-high orbit around the moon. Four days later, the spacecraft moved into an elliptical orbit and then dropped the low point of the orbit to just 9.3 miles above the lunar surface.

 

Chang'e-3 descended to the surface Saturday using a variable-thrust engine that fired for about 12 minutes. During the descent, the flight computer autonomously evaluated sensor data to make sure the landing site was level and free of any large boulders or other obstructions. The main engine shut down several feet above the surface for a free fall to touchdown.

 

China eventually plans to launch a robotic sample return mission to return soil and rocks to Earth for details laboratory analysis.

 

"I believe within two to three years we will be able to carry out very systematic and accurate research with the samples," Ouyang Ziyuan said.

 

"For now, one tough test the Chang'e-3 mission must pass is withstanding extreme cold conditions. The rover's wings collect solar energy during the day, which allow it to function. But at night none of the equipment works, because the temperature drops as low as minus 180 degree Celsius. Electronic devices are damaged if they're colder than minus 40 degrees.

 

"So we will use atomic energy storage batteries to heat them up at night and keep them operational," he said. "The batteries have to be able to work for long periods at a time, as one night on the moon lasts two full weeks on Earth."

 

© 2011 William Harwood/CBS News

 

 

New York Times

 

As Rover Lands, China Joins Moon Club

By CHRIS BUCKLEY

December 14, 2013

 

HONG KONG — China on Saturday became the third country to steer a spacecraft onto the moon after its unmanned Chang'e-3 probe settled onto the Bay of Rainbows, state-run television reported.

 

A rocket carrying the Chang'e-3 probe was launched earlier this month from China's Xichang Satellite Launch Center.

 

The United States and the Soviet Union are the other countries to have accomplished so-called soft landings on the moon — in which a craft can work after landing — and 37 years have passed since the last such mission.

 

The successful arrival of the Chang'e-3 after a 13-day journey from Earth was reported on Chinese state television. Chinese news websites displayed what they said was a photograph from the craft of the moon's surface. At the time of the last soft landing, by the Soviet Union in 1976, Mao Zedong lay a month from death and China was in the twilight of his chaotic Cultural Revolution. Now China, much richer and stronger, aspires to become a globally respected power, and the government sees a major presence in space as a key to acquiring technological prowess, military strength and sheer status.

 

Chinese media celebrated the landing as a demonstration of the country's growing scientific stature. Television reports showed engineers at the mission control center in Beijing crying, embracing and taking pictures of one another on their cellphones.

 

"The dream of the Chinese people across thousands of years of landing on the moon has finally been realized with Chang'e," said the China News Service, a state-run news agency. "By successfully joining the international deep-space exploration club, we finally have the right to share the resources on the moon with developed countries."

 

The Chang'e-3 landing craft carried a solar-powered, robotic rover called the Jade Rabbit, or Yutu in Mandarin Chinese, which was to emerge several hours later to begin exploring Sinus Iridum, or the Bay of Rainbows, a relatively smooth plain formed from solidified lava. According to a Chinese legend, Chang'e is a moon goddess, accompanied by a Jade Rabbit that can brew potions that offer immortality.

 

"It's a very ambitious mission in the sense that it's a rover with a fair amount of instruments on it," said Andrew Chaikin, a space historian and an expert on lunar travel. The instruments include radar to gather information about what lies as deep as 300 feet below the surface, Chinese space scientists have said.

 

"There is the potential that some really interesting science could come out of this," Mr. Chaikin said.

 

But the mission also embodies China's broader ambitions in space, other experts said. The Chang'e-3 mission is honing technology for future missions while also emphasizing exploration. The landing craft appears capable of carrying a payload more than a dozen times the weight of the 309-pound rover, Paul D. Spudis, a scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, said in an email.

 

"Although it will do some new science, its real value is to flight-qualify a new and potentially powerful lunar surface payload delivery system," Dr. Spudis said.

 

A later Chang'e mission, sometime before 2020, is intended to bring back rocks and other samples from the moon, and that will need a larger craft capable of sending a vehicle back to Earth. That mission will also need a more powerful launch rocket, which China is also developing.

 

Within a decade, China could also become the only country with an operating space station. The International Space Station, which has been open to astronauts from 15 countries, is due to be decommissioned by 2020, and China's own, much smaller station could be ready to go up about the same time, if preparations go smoothly. China is not among the countries allowed to use the international station.

 

Despite its benign name, China's Jade Rabbit rover could kindle anxieties among some American politicians and policy makers that the United States risks losing its pre-eminence in space in coming decades. China's opaque space bureaucracy is overseen by the military, and that has magnified wariness. Legislation passed by Congress in 2011 bars NASA from bilateral contacts with China, although multilateral contacts are not proscribed.

 

In the past, some Chinese space engineers have also enthusiastically endorsed eventually taking astronauts to the moon and back, which would make China the second country, after the United States, to achieve that feat. China sent its first astronaut into space in 2003.

 

A policy paper in 2011 said China would "conduct studies on the preliminary plan for a human lunar landing," but the government has not made any decision on a manned mission, said Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor at the United States Naval War College in Rhode Island who researches China's space activities.

 

"Certainly, they are putting all the building blocks in place so that if they make that policy decision, they can move forward," said Professor Johnson-Freese. "But the Chinese are not risk-takers. They are not going to approve that program until they are sure they are capable of all those building blocks."

 

A version of this article appears in print on December 15, 2013, on page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: As Rover Lands, China Joins Moon Club.

 

© 2013 The New York Times Company

 

 

China's moon rover leaves traces on lunar soil

Associated Press

By LOUISE WATT 

 

BEIJING (AP) — China's first moon rover has touched the lunar surface and left deep traces on its loose soil, state media reported Sunday, several hours after the country successfully carried out the world's first soft landing of a space probe on the moon in nearly four decades.

 

The 140-kilogram (300-pound) "Jade Rabbit" rover separated from the much larger landing vehicle early Sunday, around seven hours after the unmanned Chang'e 3 space probe touched down on a fairly flat, Earth-facing part of the moon.

 

State broadcaster China Central Television showed images taken from the lander's camera of the rover and its shadow moving down a sloping ladder and touching the surface, setting off applause in the Beijing control center. It said the lander and rover, both bearing Chinese flags, would take photos of each other Sunday evening.

 

Later, the six-wheeled rover will survey the moon's geological structure and surface and look for natural resources for three months, while the lander will carry out scientific explorations at the landing site for one year.

 

The mission marks the next stage in an ambitious space program that aims to eventually put a Chinese astronaut on the moon. China's space program is an enormous source of pride for the country, the third to carry out a lunar soft landing — which does not damage the craft and the equipment it carries — after the United States and the former Soviet Union. The last one was by the Soviet Union in 1976.

 

"It's still a significant technological challenge to land on another world," said Peter Bond, consultant editor for Jane's Space Systems and Industry. "Especially somewhere like the moon, which doesn't have an atmosphere so you can't use parachutes or anything like that. You have to use rocket motors for the descent and you have to make sure you go down at the right angle and the right rate of descent and you don't end up in a crater on top of a large rock."

 

On Saturday evening, CCTV showed a computer-generated image of the Chang'e 3 lander's path as it approached the surface of the moon, saying that during the landing period it needed to have no contact with Earth. As it was just hundreds of meters (yards) away, the lander's camera broadcast images of the moon's surface.

 

The Chang'e 3's solar panels, which are used to absorb sunlight to generate power, opened soon after the landing.

 

The mission blasted off from southwest China on Dec. 2 on a Long March-3B carrier rocket. It is named after a mythical Chinese goddess of the moon and the "Yutu" rover, or "Jade Rabbit" in English, is the goddess' pet.

 

China's military-backed space program has made methodical progress in a relatively short time, although it lags far behind the United States and Russia in technology and experience.

 

China sent its first astronaut into space in 2003, becoming the third nation after Russia and the United States to achieve manned space travel independently. In 2006, it sent its first probe to the moon. China plans to open a space station around 2020 and send an astronaut to the moon after that.

 

"They are taking their time with getting to know about how to fly humans into space, how to build space stations ... how to explore the solar system, especially the moon and Mars," Bond said. "They are making good strides, and I think over the next 10-20 years they'll certainly be rivaling Russia and America in this area and maybe overtaking them in some areas."

 

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. 

 

 

China Moon Landing: 'Jade Rabbit' Rover Basks in Lunar Bay of Rainbows

By Leonard David, SPACE.com's Space Insider Columnist   |   December 14, 2013 10:19pm ET

 

China's first-ever moon rover is driving on the lunar surface after successfully separating from its carrier lander to begin exploring its landing locale: the Bay of Rainbows.

 

The Chang'e 3 lunar lander reached the moon Saturday (Dec. 14) at about 9:12 p.m., Beijing time, making China only the third country in the world to achieve such a moon feat after the former Soviet Union and the United States. The lander also delivered the robotic rover Yutu ("Jade Rabbit") to the lunar surface to begin its months-long driving mission.

 

A few hours after landing, Yutu's wheels were unlocked by the firing of explosive devices and the rover unfolded its solar wings and deployed its instrument-laden mast. A cable connecting the rover and lander was then cut. A "transferer" system — resembling a pair of ladders set up on the lander —then unlocked to inch down closer to the lunar surface, allowing the Yutu rover access to the moon's surface to begin its lunar trek. [See photos of Chang'e 3 on the moon]

 

"Chang'e 3 has been landed successfully on the surface of the moon today," said Zheng Yong-Chun of the National Astronomical Observatories and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

 

China flexes moon landing legs

 

The 1-ton Chang'e 3 lander relied on auto-control for its descent to the moon and became the first spacecraft to soft-land on the lunar surface since the former Soviet Union's Luna 24 in 1976. [Most Amazing Moon Missions of All Time]

 

The lander hovered some 300 feet (100 meters) altitude above the lunar landscape as it scanned for a safe and sound landing point. The vehicle then throttled down its engine, free-falling to a legged landing.

 

The lander itself carries scientific gear capable of observing the Earth as well as other celestial objects and is designed to serve for 12 months.

 

Yutu rover on the moon

 

The Yutu moon rover is named after a pet rabbit that travels with the goddess Chang'e to the moon in Chinese legends. China has called each of its three moon missions to date after the Chang'e legend. The Chang'e 1 and Chang'e 2 orbiter missions launched in 2007 and 2010, respectively.

 

China's Yutu moon rover is a six-wheel robot that weighs nearly 310 lbs. (140 kilograms) and is outfitted with navigation and panoramic cameras. The lower front portion of the rover is equipped with hazard-avoidance cameras.

 

The solar-powered rover is built to hibernate at night and could survive three ultra-cold lunar nights, the equivalent of three Earth months.

 

Yutu tools on the moon

 

The Yutu rover carries a robotic arm with an Alpha-Proton X-ray Spectrometer, or APXS.

 

David Kring, senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, told SPACE.com that the APXS tool could, among other duties, study recent impact crater material that's been tossed out and about, revealing the material below the moon's surface; look at ejected debris in crater rays and/or in secondary craters; and help researchers develop a better model for impact cratering processes.

 

According to an informal report drafted by Kring, drawing from various Chinese sources, the moon rover carries nearly 45 lbs. (20 kilograms) of gear and has a 6-mile (10 km) range once free of the Chang'e 3 lander.

 

Yutu also sports a belly-mounted ground penetrating radar.

 

The rover's radar is believed to have a piercing depth of 100 feet to nearly 330 feet (30 meters to 100 meters). It apparently can operate in two wavelengths, giving it very high resolution at shallow depths to penetrate through the moon's topside called regolith. The other radar wavelengths can probe through the regolith and into the mare basalts.

 

Titanium-rich site

 

"The landing site for Chang'e 3 is in an area of basalt flows that are rich in Titanium similar to those returned by the Apollo 11 and 17 missions," saidClive Neal, a leading lunar scientist at the University of Notre Dame's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences.

 

"These are potentially younger than those returned by Apollo and investigating the compositions of the basalts in this region will add to our knowledge of the evolution of the lunar interior and history of volcanism on the lunar surface," Neal told SPACE.com.

 

Neal said that the data returned from the ground penetrating radar system on Yutu could allow scientists to estimate the thickness of the mare fill around the landing site, he said, and at least the depth of the lunar regolith.

 

"I am really looking forward to the data returned by this mission," Neal said.

 

Lawrence Taylor, director of the Planetary Geosciences Institute at the University of Tennessee's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, is a veteran Apollo lunar scientist. He, too, had high praise for China's Chang'e 3 mission.

 

"We Apollo lunatics salute you and your country in this marvelous event in becoming the third soft-landing nation. May your success, as initiated by your glorious 'Jade Rabbit,' be the catalyst to spur on all lunar exploration and be a bond to unite all people," Taylor said.

 

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