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

[Codz]

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.

I seriously doubt it would be any different if the US hadn't been sending probes to Mars over the previous decades. The majority of the public has never really been interested in unmanned spaceflight, regardless of nationality. The Moon especially is plagued by ridiculous arguments of "been there, done that".

 

[sorindafabico]

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.

The last image is clearly overexposed. I hope they're able to adjust camera settings from mission control.


About the press coverage: the difference between CNN US and CNN international is very clear. Despite being an unmanned mission to a non-unexplored body, the interest of the public (or the lack of) is the same inside and outside US. It's difficult to avoid any thought sbout coverage bias of US press.

 

[Kyle]

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

Look at this people, this is one of the first high quality images from the surface of the moon in nearly 40 years.

 

[Unstung]

Cropped and combined the three .gifs here into one, preserving the quality:

Hosted on imgur with compression:

 

[boogabooga]

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 .

It's on the front page of CNN US and NBC news in your screenshots. I'm sorry the font isn't as large as you would like. It is also on the front page of English Wikipedia. I could care less what FOX news has to say.

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.

Okay. Lets assume that is true. But the U.S. is certainly NOT the only country in this regard. Why not check the Indian media coverage and answer the question "what has more PR value, a lunar probe or a Mars orbiter?" Or the Japanese media coverage?

The Asian space race between China, Japan, and India seems a lot more competitive at this point.

For that matter, how does the media of the other space faring entities Russia and Europe cover this?

I'm sorry, but IMHO singling out the U.S. media to manufacture U.S.-China antagonism is a bit unfair.


By the way, I don't see any stars in those Gifs. :lol:

 

[IronRain]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMzDG51iY-Y"]China s moon rover separates from moon lander - YouTube[/ame]

 

[sorindafabico]

By the way, I don't see any stars in those Gifs.

Neither in the picture posted by 4th rock:

You can see overexposition on the rocks (totally white). Even so, the sky is empty, no stars.

Moon hoaxers will have to do some effort to tangent this. :lol:

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

Me, disguised as the Chinese lunar bunny.........oops I mean the Yutu rover saying hello! :hello:

And a photo of my girlfri.......I mean the Chang'e 3 lander from the rover. :camera:

 

[boogabooga]

Look, there is no rocket blast crater underneath the spacecraft...

Oh, this is fun!

 

[sorindafabico]

Great pictures, Galactic Penguin!

===

LROC: Safe on the surface of The Moon!

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

Stunning video of Chang'e 3's descent stitched from photos taken by the descent camera on the lander!

 

[4throck]

Slightly higher quality, still I think they are just media photographs of the giant mission control screens...
I wish there was an official site where the original images were posted. As far as I can tell, there is none.

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

Stunning video of Chang'e 3's descent stitched from photos taken by the descent camera on the lander!

Shocking Exclusive: Chang'e #3 Jade Rabbit Lunar Mission RAW Landing FOOTAGE

Well the video above has been removed, but here's the same one from another uploader:

....and this is an "upright" version of the video with the ground at the bottom. :tiphat:

Not much else to report today - especially with the "rabbit" now stopped for a "midday nap" till December 23 as the Chinese engineers evaulate the rover's thermal control abilities during midday on the Moon. :zzz:

 

[dbeachy1]

Interesting read here: Chang'e 3 update: 6 instruments active, new fan-produced landing video

Excerpt:

Zheng He reported on the current status of the lander. As best as I can do with the translation: "Change 3 is working very well on the Moon. All conditions very good, nominal. It has already begun to do extreme ultraviolet optical imaging work."

The host asked about the surprising proximity of a crater to the lander. Zheng responds (again, my best translation): "After we landed and saw the camera image [of the crater], we felt very lucky, but also very successful....This picture shows us right in front of a pit, with stone blocks right in front of the lander. But underneath the lander's feet the ground is very flat. This shows that the autonomous navigation and obstacle avoidance that we designed has succeeded, and we landed on a safe area. The crater is ten meters away from the lander; we can navigate around it, our plans are not affected by it." [14:39]

 

[4throck]

Interesting perspective on the AI landing system.

Waiting for a 360º landing site panorama with decent resolution....

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

First panorama of the landing site released! (or not, because all we got right now is a news clip showing the panorama projected in a circular room....)

But here it is!

(credit: Phil Stooke / UnmannedSpaceflight.com)

In other news the Chinese engineers determined that the thermal conditions on the Yutu rover was good enough to re-start its operations yesterday noon GMT! More photos of the rover and lander from other angles are apparently coming very soon....

 

[4throck]

Googling using chinese characters:lol: I found this link:
http://chn.chinamil.com.cn/jdtp/2013-12/15/content_5691236.htm

It has the best images I've seen yet. Not raw data, they are just photos of the big mission screens, but much better than video grabs.

Here's a nice frame from the landing, showing some dust:

http://i1.chinamil.com.cn/jdtp/attachement/jpg/site1/20131215/001fd0499b9e1417461b02.jpg

Here are some stereo views:

http://i1.chinamil.com.cn/jdtp/attachement/jpg/site1/20131215/001fd0499b9e1417415e4f.jpg

And here an official (?) map:

Finally, here's a small pan made from the images on that link, assembled by me:

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

Two more recent shots released:

 

[4throck]

Like the flag on a special support.

The lander is oversized for the rover, so the design is clearly future proof. I wonder if the Shenzou orbital module would fit in top of it...

 

[MattBaker]

The lander is oversized for the rover, so the design is clearly future proof. I wonder if the Shenzou orbital module would fit in top of it...

Well, the lander+orbital module surely wouldn't work. The lander is 1200 kilograms plus 140 kilograms for the rover. The orbital module of the Shenzhou is 1500 kilograms.

But what it is is a technology demonstrator for Chang'e 5, a sample return mission like the late Luna missions done by the Soviets set for 2017, give or take a couple of years.