Updates "Hi Artemis, it's been a long time!": China's Chang'e 3 lunar landing mission

[Cosmic Penguin]

No one's watching? IT'S ON THE MOON! Landing occurred at 13:12 UTC.

 

[sorindafabico]

CCTV Streaming is down here.

 

[4throck]

For me this works:
http://english.cntv.cn/live/p2p/index.shtml

Tuned in too late, since the probe has landed. But they are talking about rover deployment soon, so I think we will see that live ;-)

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

For me this works:
http://english.cntv.cn/live/p2p/index.shtml

Tuned in too late, since the probe has landed. But they are talking about rover deployment soon, so I think we will see that live ;-)

I think that's not going to happen until around 8 hours later.

Oh and

 

[sorindafabico]

 

[RGClark]

Congratulations to China's space program on the successful landing.

Bob Clark

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

Interestingly the landing site is at 19.51 deg. West, 44.12 deg. North - actually well to the east of Sinus Iridum and into Mare Imbrium. The crater Laplace F is about 40 km to the north west.

And first photo from the lunar surface since 1973!

 

[MattBaker]

Interestingly the landing site is at 19.51 deg. West, 44.12 deg. - actually well to the east of Sinus Iridum and into Mare Imbrium. The crater Laplace F is about 40 km to the north west.

Understandable, if you look at maps of the lunar surface that looks like a quite big area with no big craters whatsoever. If you do your first landing on another celestial body you're surely not going for Hadley Rille, do you?

 

[N_Molson]

Well done, it sure made a long time nothing landed on the Moon, as NASA is focusing on deep space, the asteroids and Mars.

I hope this opens a new era of lunar exploration, and that we will live to see a new serie of manned landings and maybe an outpost.

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

China's Chang'e-3 landed on the Moon!! - YouTube

Longer version from de-orbit burn to touchdown:

 

[4throck]

In case someone want's to do some ground tiles , here's a quick mosaic of some of the descent camera frames I assembled:

I corrected the proportions to have square craters. Scale is unknown.
There are some more distant frames that could cover a larger area.

 

[kamaz]

I've decided to have a look how US news organizations are covering the first lunar landing in 40 years.

Note the difference between international and domestic editions of CNN. My first thought was Apollo 11 coverage in Pravda.

 

[boogabooga]

To be fair, an unmanned rover is many times less interesting to the average person than the first manned lunar landing. It doesn't help that today is also the Newtown massacre anniversary and follows another shooting (in the same district as Columbine no less) yesterday.

Question1: was MSL landing last year the top story of the day for any of those sites? I don't remember, but I doubt it.

Question 2: was MSL landing the top story of the day in Chinese media last year?

I don't remember anyone on the MSL thread checking to see how it was covered in foreign media. Just saying.

 

[Codz]

My first thought was Apollo 11 coverage in Pravda.

Though this is certainly an important accomplishment for the Chinese space program, it really isn't as momentous an occasion as Apollo 11 was for the US, and for humanity as a whole. It also doesn't help that, as boogabooga posted, it's the anniversary of a massacre of elementary school children. I'm sure that if and when the Chinese send a manned Lunar mission, there will be much more coverage.

 

[dbeachy1]

Here's a photo of the rover on the moon's surface:

 

[Lunar_Lander]

Here is a Post in the Planetary Society Blog by Emily Lakdawalla: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/12141328-six-wheels-on-soil-for-yutu.html

Contains this video of Rover Deployment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFb1E63AxNI

 

[kamaz]

To be fair, an unmanned rover is many times less interesting to the average person than the first manned lunar landing.

On the flip side though, it has made front page on reddit today. Twice. See attachment. Since reddit seems to have mainly 20-30 U.S. demographics, at least kids have interest in space .

Question1: was MSL landing last year the top story of the day for any of those sites? I don't remember, but I doubt it.

Except we're getting a U.S. Mars probes regularly now, and this is the first one after 40 year hiatus -- and Chinese at that, whom the U.S. views as its main competitor. This is why reaction of U.S. media is extremely interesting.

 

[4throck]

Nice surface view.This and the other photos with decent quality here:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/photo/2013-12/15/c_132968376_5.htm

 

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

Here's a photo of the rover on the moon's surface:

:thumbup: Cool shot, although why is it so reddish looking? Is there something odd about the camera, or is it just a rough image?

I feel like this will be a very famous photo someday.

 

[4throck]

A wild guess:

The reddish hue is typical of a webcam with all settings on auto or color temperature badly set. The dark sky might be fooling the autogain settings, so you get some overexposing.