China’s Chang’e-3 Moon Rover Descends to Lower Orbit Sets Up Historic Soft Landing

[pakdefender]

Congratulations China !! , what a brilliant achievment .. all on their own

unlike some other neighbouring country which is being provided assitance by a world power in space exploration just to poke china in the eye.

Slow and steady , Onwards and upwards.

Best wishes for China

 

[Star Wars]

Breaking News !!

China moon rover had knocked over the American Flag on the moon!!











joke.....

would be a good idea though

 

[SrNair]

I am calm, How about you call in a mod, an international mod, and see who is correct and please stop this thread derailment let it be for the great achievement of our Chinese allies...

Congratulations to all chinese friends

 

[pakdefender]

Chinese moon rover launched successfully - CNN.com

The moon exploration makes China one of only three nations -- after the United States and the former Soviet Union -- to "soft-land" on the moon's surface, and the first to do so in more than three decades

So india is not offically part of the nations declared to have reached the moon

India crashed its probe on the moon and called it a 'hard landing' .. lol thats like tieing a long string to a rock , thowing it in the mariana trench and then claiming .. I have reached the deepest depths of the oceans

 

[FOX80]

Congrats China..Well done...

 

[Genesis]

Tears baby, tears.

China doubters, moo

Breaking News !!

China moon rover had knocked over the American Flag on the moon!!











joke.....

would be a good idea though

bad idea, we'll take it back with us when our men land on the moon.

A free flag is a free flag.

One small flag for us, one giant middle finger to the US.

 

[Speeder 2]

I think they're too conservative and wasted some very good chances of experimenting new things.

This actually is the 1st time humans put a digital information-age-enabled technolgies on the Moon.

the US and Soviets missions were quite dulling and primitive in terms of high tech- we only have some black and white dead fotos on rocks and a few secs of vid of US astronauts jumping up and down...

China's lander could have done much, but much, more cool things with current digital tech !!!

Obviously the payload is not that tight enough.

I would have put more stuff into the lander instead of just a rover.


e.g. why not put a small drone in it, with its own small engine ( like that 7,500N engine, but a tiny one) with its own fuel, together a solar panel engine?

like a sort of helicopter with a hi-def camera and antenna on its nose...

oke, with 2 cameras adjusted to a right angle so that it can shoot both terrains and itself at the same time...

then let it fly over a much wider area of the moon shooting all kinds of high-def vids and transferring them to either the lander or directly back to the earth, depending on which way is more energy-efficient - I'd transmit the vids to the lander first and let the lander transfer them to the earth bit by bit later.. when the fuel is over, just let it crash on the surface- yet some more data...

That would be much cooler than a slow-moving rover alone, woudn't it?

and it would be the first country to fly a "UFO" over Moon terrains, looking like a real "Star War" with the blue planet in its background how cool will that be?

Those vids sent back would make Battlefields 4 or Transformer 3 look like jokes!

If China puts them into youtube or make it a short commecial movie with these footages, it would break the All-Time view records of both Youtube and Hollywood cinema. And this will be unique. even though the US landed sth on Mars, but the distance is too huge to shoot some real time rover movie, let alone some fly-over stunts ... this Moon opportunity is perfect for these things...


So if like this,

1. tech-wise: using existing tech as 7,500n...drone/ remote-hellos, remote control, sensing, transmitting...

2. science-wise: a big news for worldwide scientists, since the fly-over would provide them with many many 1st-time-ever interesting new Moon terrains to analise

3. entertainment-wise: clips of this either standlone or combined with other scenes in youtube or a short movie for cinema would get entire online-worldwide poplution ( billions?) glued to the screen!

4. commencial-wise: either China's movie industry or other industries can pre-fund the project, later profiting from any movies, video games, toys, whatever intellectual-property rights of using, leasing the footages... can earn millions! (so no problem with initital budget for this project either.)

5. military-wise: also test some interesting new tech for remote sensing, control etc new weapon systems on lands or high sea...

6. world-wide conception-wise: fascilitate to break streotypes...it's a good example for China to be asscoiated with innovations/high tec, a big propanganda win. And the whole world will know it - worths 10X than the annual budget of CCTV or xinhua. the entire concept will stay in history book as the first, highly entertaning, and unique, beating both American and Soviets' moon landing effect.

 

[pakdefender]

It might be good to actually check whether the US actually ever did land on the moon , like find debris from the apollo mission

Niel Armstrong went very quiet after his mission and Buz Aldrin turned to being violent when questioned about the american moon landing

buzz aldrin punches guy - YouTube

 

[nomi007]

during testing

 

[homing28]

 

[Trichy]

Congratz to all Chinese People, now lock and load for a maned mission... All the Best..!

 

[shashank]

Congratulations China !! , what a brilliant achievment .. all on their own

unlike some other neighbouring country which is being provided assitance by a world power in space exploration just to poke china in the eye.

Slow and steady , Onwards and upwards.

Best wishes for China

Do you have any source on how Nasa is helping India's Mars mission? Other than helping with tracking (which even South Africa does for India) they don't help with anything. MOM used entirely different idea to go to trans mars orbit.

If you think tracking the spacecraft is the help from Nasa, Chinese also got help from ESA for this moon landing.
Just google how ESA provided support for this moon landing. These things are normal in space exploration, It does not undermine anyone's acheivement.

On topic : Congrats and good going China! What's next on the list? Mars or Man landing on moon.

 

[Speeder 2]

Do you have any source on how Nasa is helping India's Mars mission? Other than helping with tracking (which even South Africa does for India) they don't help with anything. MOM used entirely different idea to go to trans mars orbit.

If you think tracking the spacecraft is the help from Nasa, Chinese also got help from ESA for this moon landing.
Just google how ESA provided support for this moon landing. These things are normal in space exploration, It does not undermine anyone's acheivement.

On topic : Congrats and good going China! What's next on the list? Mars or Man landing on moon.

Source? it's not that hard, you just have to think a little:

1. to track things in space, you need BIG and high quality telescopes, in different locations of the world, and some deep-space sats/telescope, too.

2. China has the biggest new telescope in Asia, and many remote sensing sats in high alt space. what Indian has? IF you have nothing, you can't track anything, simples.

3. China needs telecopes in different locations on earth for tracking. So either ESA helps China or China puts its own ships (with giant dishes) in European waters to track itself. EPA fascilates China by giving a hand ( save some extra troubles for China to deploy ships there) for a return of favour of sending EU astronauts to space using China's spaceship/s in the near future.

4. In short China has both tech AND hardware to track near moon objects and objects in reasonablely deep space (see Chang é 2) . Beyond certain point however, only NASA can track using its deep space sat/telescope to relay signals.

5. India, however, doesn't have telescopes to track even near-earth-atmerephere objects (you genius think Mars and Jupitor were Chinese drones , remember? you don't even have a clue), let alone moon, let alone further than moon (where your probe is now), let alone close to mars, and let alone around mars (youe destination), get it?

6. well, how to value India's mars probe tech then? no advanced tech invovled, simples. Just shooting a simple rocket into the sky and let NASA and ESA do the hard work. That's why India's cost is so cheap compared to others . ISRO only needs to calculate the cost of the rocket and its salaries. ALL hardware (deep space assets) are not in its cost list because Indian don't have them. NASA do. The whole point of ANY Mars probe is to see a space agency's deep space tracking and senseing capabilites, that's the whole point, get it? And that space agency is NOT ISRO, but ESA & NASA, can't you see?

What ISRO does is simple maths calculation which most graduates who study astrophysics and maths know how to calculate theoritical tracks given data. The difficult one is how to track and control them which ISRO has 0 capability.

e.g. right now, ISRO only knows where is Indian probe in deep spacer more or less, theoritically, according to its calculation. It doesn't know it for sure though in reality ! Can ISRO see/sensing it? NO!, Can ISRO track it in real time? NO. Can ISRO control it? NO! Instead, NASA & EPA do. Whenever ISRO wants to change its track, for example, it first must call NASA & ESP, then NASA & ESP tells ISRO where is its probe right now and NASA relays the orders, before passing back confirmation of the orders to ISRO. ISRO is blind and deaf - that's the level of tech of Indian Mars shot .

The same thing can not be said to China's moon shoot. As you can see from youtube vids, the entire Chinese mission of moon has been directly and only controlled by China's space agency in Beijing. Nothing to do with NASA. Nothing to do with EPA, if china didn't want that small favour from it in the mid way but sending its own tracking ships to European waters instead.

If China sends a Mars probe tomorrow, China can track it from A to Z all the way using its newest & biggest high quality telescope of Asia located in the South China. Where is India's equivalent telescope/s? and what sizes they have?

...

Then you don't need a source to spoon-feed you how all these work. You just need a brain to figure it out correctly.

 

[shashank]

Source? it's not that hard, you just have to think a little:

1. to track things in space, you need BIG and high quality telescopes, in different locations of the world, and some deep-space sats/telescope, too.

2. China has the biggest new telescope in Asia, and many remote sensing sats in high alt space. what Indian has? IF you have nothing, you can't track anything, simples.

3. China needs telecopes in different locations on earth for tracking. So either ESA helps China or China puts its own ships (with giant dishes) in European waters to track itself. EPA fascilates China by giving a hand ( save some extra troubles for China to deploy ships there) for a return of favour of sending EU astronauts to space using China's spaceship/s in the near future.

4. In short China has both tech AND hardware to track near moon objects and objects in reasonablely deep space (see Chang é 2) . Beyond certain point however, only NASA can track using its deep space sat/telescope to relay signals.

5. India, however, doesn't have telescopes to track even near-earth-atmerephere objects (you genius think Mars and Jupitor were Chinese drones , remember? you don't even have a clue), let alone moon, let alone further than moon (where your probe is now), let alone close to mars, and let alone around mars (youe destination), get it?

6. well, how to value India's mars probe tech then? no advanced tech invovled, simples. Just shooting a simple rocket into the sky and let NASA and ESA do the hard work. That's why India's cost is so cheap compared to others . ISRO only needs to calculate the cost of the rocket and its salaries. ALL hardware (deep space assets) are not in its cost list because Indian don't have them. NASA do. The whole point of ANY Mars probe is to see a space agency's deep space tracking and senseing capabilites, that's the whole point, get it? And that space agency is NOT ISRO, but ESA & NASA, can't you see?

What ISRO does is simple maths calculation which most graduates who study astrophysics and maths know how to calculate theoritical tracks given data. The difficult one is how to track and control them which ISRO has 0 capability.

e.g. right now, ISRO only knows where is Indian probe in deep spacer more or less, theoritically, according to its calculation. It doesn't know it for sure though in reality ! Can ISRO see/sensing it? NO!, Can ISRO track it in real time? NO. Can ISRO control it? NO! Instead, NASA & EPA do. Whenever ISRO wants to change its track, for example, it first must call NASA & ESP, then NASA & ESP tells ISRO where is its probe right now and NASA relays the orders, before passing back confirmation of the orders to ISRO. ISRO is blind and deaf - that's the level of tech of Indian Mars shot .

The same thing can not be said to China's moon shoot. As you can see from youtube vids, the entire Chinese mission of moon has been directly and only controlled by China's space agency in Beijing. Nothing to do with NASA. Nothing to do with EPA, if china didn't want that small favour from it in the mid way but sending its own tracking ships to European waters instead.

If China sends a Mars probe tomorrow, China can track it from A to Z all the way using its newest & biggest high quality telescope of Asia located in the South China. Where is India's equivalent telescope/s? and what sizes they have?

...

Then you don't need a source to spoon-feed you how all these work. You just need a brain to figure it out correctly.

You have no idea what you are talking about. Deep space missions are tracked using large antennas using radio signals and radar astronomy. You can view planets and asteroids using telescope which are larger in size not a spacecraft when it's millions of miles away from earth.

India had the biggest telescope till 2008. China built a slightly bigger one in 2008. India has cluster of remote sensing satellites but you don't use these for deep space communication.

India built it's own deep space network near Bangalore which has 1 big antenna and 2 smaller ones. Which is good enough for deep space communication. But the problem is it's visible period is only 8 hours a day. So NASA is helping during non visible periods since NASA has Antennas set up in different parts of the world in California, Spain and Australia.

If china send a mars mission now they have to rely on others DSN for tracking during non visible periods.

You can write whatever you want if it makes you feel better. I have great respect for Chinese space program and I don't deny that.

 

[cirr]

6-minute long landing video with BGM：

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjQ4NzIzMjU2.html

The Yutu Rover

The Chang'e 3 Lander