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

[Cosmic Penguin]

Some photos over the past few days:

Apparently I have forgotten to mention what kind of scientific and other instruments the lander and rover have - so that will go in the next post!

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

I'm busy covering the launch on another site, so follow my posts starting from here! :tiphat:

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

T-100 minutes. Live coverage by the Chinese state TV's English channel should start in less than 10 minutes: http://english.cntv.cn/live/p2p/index.shtml

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

Graphs related to the history of lunar exploration.....

http://www.chartgeek.com/moon-landings-chart/

http://historicspacecraft.com/Probes_Lunar.html

 

[4throck]

T-100 minutes. Live coverage by the Chinese state TV's English channel should start in less than 10 minutes: http://english.cntv.cn/live/p2p/index.shtml

Nice broadcast so far and decent streaming...but I'll switch to CCTV on satellite for a better view latter :thumbup:

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

20 minutes to go. I'm heading for the TV soon so Good Luck for the launch phase!

 

[Codz]

T-3 minutes.

 

[fraxudemspas]

"...is less than one minute...and thirty seconds...until launch...of the probe."

The Chinese TV commentary is pure gold. Godspeed Chang'e!

 

[Codz]

Tower arms retracted.

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Liftoff!

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Booster sep.

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Fairing sep.

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Second stage sep. Third stage ignition.

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Third stage cutoff.

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Coasting to TLI.

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TLI start.

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TLI complete.

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Spacecraft sep!

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And the journey begins. Congratulations!

 

[fraxudemspas]

A nice view of the probe's RCS and main engine firing from the third stage.

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

Well my earlier report about the lunar landing date needs to be corrected, as it seems that the landing will come on December 14, 2 days earlier than I have reported.

Best Chinese launch I have ever seen! Now the difficult part begins.

 

[Codz]

Following the launch on three forums!

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

Landing legs and solar arrays on the lander have been deployed! :thumbup:

 

[Kendo]

All seemed to go extremely well, and it was beautifully filmed.
This is an amazing lander and probe. The lander will land totally by itself without any human control. A fascinating project.

This would make a great Orbiter addon

 

[Codz]

Here's hoping for future American-Chinese-European cooperation in space.

 

[sorindafabico]

Congratulations to China.

I wish that other countries follow the Chinese example.

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Landing legs and solar arrays on the lander have been deployed! :thumbup:

Launch of Chinese Chang'e 3 Lunar Exploration Rover on Long March 3B

I hear the same word constantly in this video. Must be the equivalent in mandarin for "nominal".

 

[4throck]

Nice coverage indeed. The english comment was more accurate than usual for TV. The journalist was prepared and provided a good explanation of the mission.
Also liked him playing with the models :thumbup:

I used to follow the Nasa stuff on CNN (when they did such things) and the journalists seemed less prepared (although the commentators were good).

 

[Kendo]

I seems they aim to land near the Laplace_A crater.
If they get too close to Brighton, I will scramble some Eagles just in case.

On a serious note, are we going to see anything of this mission. They mentioned they have a decent array of cameras onboard.?

 

[4throck]

Don't know. I think they mentioned cameras on the rover to image the lander. Since they are independent, perhaps the rover can take some images and relay them back to Earth.

Also, there's indeed a descent camera.
http://www.spaceflight101.com/change-3.html

In addition to its three Pancams, the lander is equipped with a single Descent Camera that was tested on the Chang’e 2 spacecraft. The Micro-CMOS camera provides images of 1,280 by 1,024 pixels during the descent to the lunar surface. Details such as exposure times and frame rate have not been given.

The nadir-facing camera is expected to be active when the lander is hovering 100 meters above the surface of the Moon, taking images of the landing site to help rover mission planners to select drive routes later in the mission. The camera is likely taking images all the way down to the surface as the lander makes its constant low velocity descent to an altitude of 4 meters for engine shutdown.

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

Launch photos

More than a dozen more launch photos are available here. :tiphat: