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China

Chang'e-3 Lands on the Moon and Deploys Yutu Rover

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
December 14, 2013
Filed under , , ,

China Lands Chang’e-3 On The Moon, VOA (with CCTV Video)
“Chinese state media say China has successfully landed a space probe on the moon, in the first lunar “soft landing” in nearly four decades. The Chang’e-3 lunar probe blasted off earlier this month from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in China’s southwestern Sichuan province. It carried with it a moon rover, known as “Jade Rabbit.”
Keith’s update: The Yutu rover has been deployed and is driving on the lunar surface.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

38 responses to “Chang'e-3 Lands on the Moon and Deploys Yutu Rover”

  1. Odyssey2020 says:
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    This is great, we’re finally on the moon again! It’s been a lunar surface drought way, way too long

    • Rocky J says:
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      Are you kidding… we? I’m an American, first, Earthling second, Chinese cheerleader, third. … ha-ha! Just kidding! I hope it functions well. Great achievement for them landing on their first attempt.

    • Anonymous says:
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      We are in orbit around the moon but not on the moon. This is a clear challenge to US leadership. Consider that they intentionally landed during a time when we are trying to conduct an investigation of the moon’s environment. The timing may compromise our investigation. They also are trying to play bumper cars with our Navy. The trend is clear.

      • LPHartswick says:
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        The only thing Michael Dukakis ever said that I agree with is that “a fish rots from the head down”. Until our national leadership wakes up, or smartens up, and treats space exploration like the national priority it should be, we will continue our slow decline and should continue to learn Manderin.

        • Anonymous says:
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          Well, you better get to work on your fellow citizens because the majority do not see space exploration as a national priority. The lack of interest is not only in Washington DC.

          Alas, if you’re going to use scare tactics and fear mongering, you should at least learn to spell Mandarin.

        • Joe Cooper says:
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          We don’t get to pretend Washington is some nefarious other. They get up, open their mouths and say whatever is going to resonate with people in order to get their votes; even shady campaign contributions are a means to that end. If funnelling forty billion a year to contractors would get people in the mood than it would occur.

          And that’s the cynical view.

      • Anonymous says:
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        Actually the trend is not clear. They may have targeted this date because of its historical significance with respect to our manned Moon missions, but I think its laughable to think they chose the date to muck with one of our missions.

        You seem to forget that while we are in orbit around the Moon and the Chinese have just made a successful landing, we are in orbit around Mars and a number of other planets and have made a number of successful landings on Mars.

        This is a time to congratulate the Chinese and to start thinking about them as possible partners in the future rather than take paranoid confrontational approach to space exploration.

        • Anonymous says:
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          The trend of actions meant to intimidate is very clear. They have arbitrarily declared air defense zones and conducted dangerous naval maneuvers. They are not to be trusted, let alone viewed as a potential partner. We need to action, alone, ASAP.

          • Anonymous says:
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            Your perception is only clear if someone buys into the paranoid nationalistic view required.

            The much smarter approach is to engage China and work with them. We’ve done the cold war thing. it benefited no one.

      • mattmcc80 says:
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        Actually the LADEE team considered the timing of the two missions (Which few seriously believe was intentional) a good thing. More on that here: http://www.planetary.org/bl

  2. Joe Cooper says:
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    I also like their 3D visualisation; it looked very natural by visualisation standards.

  3. Spacetech says:
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    Congrats! Hope you have HD cameras onboard!

  4. savuporo says:
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    Is it just me or is it weird that just European, Indian space officials have officially congratulated Chang’e team on their achievements ?

  5. Ben Russell-Gough says:
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    That said, I’m beginning to doubt that that major networks are capable of reporting serious or relevant news anymore.

  6. dogstar29 says:
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    It looks like they used a 3-d laser scanner for autonomous final approach guidance; i’m not sure about Curiosity but I’m pretty sure nothing like this has been done on the moon before.

    • savuporo says:
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      It was not a 3d lidar – just a regular laser rangefinder. However, combined with microwave, laser and visual camera images, it did do an autonomous hazard avoidance maneuver.

      This has not been done yet on any previous lander mission. Thats what ALHAT project with Morpheus is all about.

  7. Odyssey2020 says:
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    Here you go, this is the best site I’ve found so far:

    http://english.cntv.cn/spec

  8. Steve Whitfield says:
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    Sampling the reactions (and lack of) here and there in the media and on the web, it seems to me like there are two groups, those who are congratulating the Chinese for this impressive accomplishment, and those who aren’t sure how to react and so are mostly saying nothing. The latter group appears to me to be in the majority, which is kind of weird since it’s not like nobody knew this was coming.

    A message to those Americans in various places who have made negative or provocative comments: This is not about you. It’s about what a large number of Chinese people worked long and hard to accomplish. When America explored the Moon the whole world congratulated you, including the Chinese and the Russians. Try being as gracious now that it’s someone else’s turn.

    • savuporo says:
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      which is kind of weird since it’s not like nobody knew this was coming.

      But they didnt. Every mention of space and chinese, apart from Chinese was filed away in a footnote section somewhere – Mars this, Moon that. I got a haircut this morning, and was wearing my “Occupy Mars” t-shirt. The woman asked – “we havent been there yet, have we ?”

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        Thanks savuporo. I guess location has an effect on what we see in the way of international news. That’s something I’ll keep in mind.

        I live in Canada, specifically southern Ontario, about 45 minutes’ drive from New York state, so I tend to sample the US news and the UK news as well as the Canadian news. There was certainly a lot less mention of the Chinese lunar mission than I would have hoped, but it was mentioned in all three countries’ news reports starting before launch. One factor, perhaps, is that it I never saw it in the first 10 minutes of a 30 or 60 minute news program; it was always near the end, by which time not everyone is watching any more (we can only tolerate so much bad news or filler). Those of us who come daily to NASA Watch knew about it.

        I can only comment on what I saw, of course, and couldn’t watch all of the news everywhere, but it seemed to me that the US and UK made far less mention of it than the Canadian news. I’ll leave it to others to decide if there’s any significance in that, if true.

        Perhaps I’m being naive or engaging in wishful thinking, but when another country pulls off a successful, peaceful space mission like this, I don’t see the imagined threat that some others have expressed; rather I see it as a gain for our common cause. The more countries that join the “space club,” the more likely it is that almost every government (and hopefully its public) is going to want to commit more to space exploration and exploitation, and we all move forward.

        I got used to the phrase, Humans to Mars, but lately I see more and more cases of those who apparently would prefer to devolve this idea to Americans to Mars, and that troubles me. If I had to explain why it troubles me to anyone, then I’d probably be wasting my time with them.

        This is, of course, only my opinion. Others are quite free to express their own opinions on NASA Watch, within the limits of what the moderators find acceptable. To those few like Mack who consistently offer nothing useful, sarcasm and insult are not opinion; if you disagree with what I, or anyone else, has written, fine, present a counter opinion, with your reasons; don’t just type a one-line insult and then run away like an undisciplined child.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Indeed.

    • Joe Cooper says:
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      I got sucked into some arguments with people insisting it’s fake. One person was challenging everyone to find any actual photos of it – in a comment thread directly under a set of photos.

      He said “can you really imagine something the Chinese made getting to the Moon?”

      The Chinese have built nuclear bombs, battleships, ballistic missiles, computers, digital cameras, … Some of these things are monumentally hard. Rocket powered landers? Even small private teams like Armadillo pull that off. What secret magic do these hoax people thing is involved in space?

      The secret magic in question is the right talent, the right management and the right funding; that sometimes these wonderful things are directed at the sky.

      As for trusting China, the US can track the probe’s flight, see the rover’s tracks and detect its rocket exhaust.

      But, you know, New World Order and all that …

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        It is indeed amazing that in this modern western world of supposedly educated people there are still those who insist on believing what they want to believe, independent of any evidence or commonly accepted facts. Perhaps they simply find comfort in having something to believe in, and the details of the “something” don’t really matter, just the comfort of believing. To me. the real fear is when they start convincing other people and/or achieving positions of power.

    • Jafafa Hots says:
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      Most Americans didn’t know it was coming. Hell, if it was a US lander most Americans wouldn’t have known ahead of time.

      Too busy worrying about the terrible War on Christmas, doncha know…

  9. Anonymous says:
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    I noticed that you failed to mention that there is also little interest in Congress and in the public for a manned US lunar mission. Those are undeniable facts that cannot be ignored.

  10. Saturn1300 says:
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    Nice video. It did hover and move. There was a large crater it seemed to avoid. JPL was talking about doing this to land on Mars. Sorry JPL you are not the first. So it is possible to land to pick up samples or land supplies at a base. No need to have a miles wide landing ellipse. I guess SpaceX or NASA does not need it for awhile and China did. No need to buy a license like they had to do after they found someone had already invented Green Fuel. I think SpaceX and NASA can do it. Even at 1 fps it was nice to see the ramp extension and drive down and make tracks. The soil looks soft. Thanks for the link. SpaceX had better watch out or Mars1 and L-M will be the first private company to Mars. I still bet on SpaceX.

    • Anonymous says:
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      You cannot compare the landing of Chang’e-3 and Curiosity. The two machines have vastly different masses, and the approach to Mars is significantly different than those possible to the Moon. The differences don’t stop there.

      • Saturn1300 says:
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        True. On Mars parachutes are used. With steerable parachutes, terrain recognition and the sky crane able to maneuver it should be able to make a pin point landing. I know that Chang’e-3 did not make a planned pin point landing. It came down somewhere close to predictions and used obstacle avoidance to land. So JPL can still be first. My mistake..

        • Steve Whitfield says:
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          Although air pressure on Mars is slight, the winds can still be devastating, and the gravity is twice lunar, so I think that makes it difficult to compare Moon and Mars landings; they’re two different sets of problems. It’s good to know that in both cases success has been achieved more than once.

          • Saturn1300 says:
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            True. I checked the winds on Mars. Normal max is 10mph. In dust storms it can get to 60. So if a direct landing was used it could hit high winds and could not steer. Better to go into orbit and wait until it is clear. Most of the time a steerable parachute would work, since it could glide faster than 10mph. But the best way would be to use a steerable capsule with INS to keep it on track and then a rocket landing. JPL is testing part of 100′ parachute, which is 2x bigger than what they have been using.

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            I’d be curious to see how they’re testing it. They had testing problems on a previous program because they were testing a large parachute in a large wind tunnel, which turned out to be invalid because the real application is vertical, whereas the wind tunnel simulation of it is horizontal, so the gravity vector is rotated 90º from the actual, which affects how the parachute opens (or doesn’t, as it turns out).
             

  11. Dr. Brian Chip Birge says:
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    Congrats to China on a fantastic mission. While I think nationalistic fervor is the wrong reason to have space exploration, if this gets the public interested in the moon again then I’m ok with that. Regardless, China deserves kudos for this.

  12. Steven Rappolee says:
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    The administration made the right call Cessna_Driver, based on the Augustine report and that is the “flexible path”
    This might borrow a page from the ISS agreement in that SLS could loft a Chinese lunar human crewed human lander with an international crew
    I congratulate the Chinese on their achievement!

  13. Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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    Well done to the Chinese on getting to the Moon. The BBC has been including it in the news.

    Now to get money so Morpheus can land RESOLVE on the Moon.