China's Chang'e-4 probe soft-lands on moon's far side - Xinhua

[LKJ86]

 

[JSCh]

To celebrate China space day, CCTV documentary channel aired 《飞向月球》(fly to the moon) series of documentary.

In Chinese Mandarin, link -> 《飞向月球》| 记录人类探月故事【全5集】 - YouTube

Screen capture from 《飞向月球》 第四集月球背面 ("fly to the moon" episode 4 "far side of the moon"), the descend path of Chang'e-4 lander.

 

[JSCh]

China's Chang'e-4 probe resumes work for fifth lunar day
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-29 15:34:28|Editor: Li Xia

BEIJING, April 29 (Xinhua) -- The lander and the rover of the Chang'e-4 probe have resumed work for the fifth lunar day on the far side of the moon after "sleeping" during the extreme cold night.

The lander woke up at 7:40 a.m. Monday, and the rover, Yutu-2 (Jade Rabbit-2), awoke at 1:45 p.m. Sunday. Both are in normal working condition, according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration.

The rover has traveled an accumulated 178.9 meters on the moon and worked about one month longer than its designed life.

China's Chang'e-4 probe, launched on Dec. 8, 2018, made the first-ever soft landing on the Von Karman Crater in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the moon on Jan. 3.

A lunar day equals 14 days on Earth, and a lunar night is the same length. The Chang'e-4 probe switched to a dormant mode during the lunar night due to the lack of solar power.

As a result of the tidal locking effect, the moon's revolution cycle is the same as its rotation cycle, and the same side always faces Earth.

The far side of the moon has unique features, and scientists expect Chang'e-4 could bring breakthrough findings.

The scientific tasks of the Chang'e-4 mission include low-frequency radio astronomical observation, surveying the terrain and landforms, detecting the mineral composition and shallow lunar surface structure and measuring neutron radiation and neutral atoms.

The Chang'e-4 mission embodies China's hope to combine human wisdom in space exploration with four payloads developed by the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Saudi Arabia.

 

[name]

why does China not release much of Chang'e- 3,4,5 on the moon, the Chang'e- 3,4,5 rocket very well,
Duplicate the rocket, duplicate the engine.
coppi chang'e 3,4,5 & paste chang'e 3,4,5
coppi & paste.
Chang'e, coppi much Chang'e 4, Chang'e 4,, 4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4. Chang'e 5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5 launches on the moon .. hundreds of robots on it search for discovery,construction robots, control robots with 5G, 6G, 7G, 8G ...
control robots with quantum telematics ...robot control, teleport, quantum ...China to release all, make the city above Which Mars & moon.

 

[Jlaw]

why does China not release much of Chang'e- 3,4,5 on the moon, the Chang'e- 3,4,5 rocket very well,
Duplicate the rocket, duplicate the engine.
coppi chang'e 3,4,5 & paste chang'e 3,4,5
coppi & paste.
Chang'e, coppi much Chang'e 4, Chang'e 4,, 4,4,4,4,4,4,4,4. Chang'e 5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5 launches on the moon .. hundreds of robots on it search for discovery,construction robots, control robots with 5G, 6G, 7G, 8G ...
control robots with quantum telematics ...robot control, teleport, quantum ...China to release all, make the city above Which Mars & moon.

Chinese Communist mentality. It's all about face not substance.

 

[mike2000 is back]

Congrats China. Good achievement for science .

 

[Han Patriot]

Chinese Communist mentality. It's all about face not substance.

And you think LCA has substance? Lol

 

[name]

Chinese Communist mentality. It's all about face not substance.

control any foreigner entering and leaving China, whether it is an infant or a beautiful girl, including Chinese.
control small strange objects to spy on -> they can steal Chinese technology.

 

[LKJ86]

 

[Beast]

control any foreigner entering and leaving China, whether it is an infant or a beautiful girl, including Chinese.
control small strange objects to spy on -> they can steal Chinese technology.

You mean any Tom dick Harry that included terrorist or criminal can enter Vietnam freely?

 

[JSCh]

嫦娥四号着陆器、巡视器完成第五月昼工作，今日进入月夜休眠

中国探月工程 发布于 2019-05-11 12:46:03

今天，“玉兔二号”巡视器已完成第五月昼的科学探测工作，于5月11日11时05分进入第五月夜。巡视器根据整体规划进行移动，累计行走190.66米。巡视器移动过程中，按计划组织实施了巡视器红外光谱仪、全景相机、中性原子探测仪、测月雷达等有效载荷的开机探测工作，地面接收载荷数传数据正常。

嫦娥四号着陆器于5月11日12时完成月夜设置，进入休眠。第五月昼期间，着陆器工况正常，有效载荷月球中子及辐射剂量探测仪、低频射电谱仪按计划开展有效探测工作，地面接收科学探测数据正常。

嫦娥四号工程地面应用系统已向科学研究核心团队发布最新科学探测数据，总数据量为6.6GB，共计494个数据文件。后续，地面科研人员将对获取的科学探测数据进行专业处理和分析研究。

Chang'e-4 lander, rover completes the fifth lunar day of work, today enters lunar night
China lunar exploration project released on 2019-05-11 12:46:03

Today, the Yutu-2 rover has completed the scientific exploration work of the fifth lunar day, and entered the fifth lunar night at 11:05 on May 11. The rover moves according to the overall plan, and the total walking distance is 190.66 meters. During the movement of the rover, the rover instrument like infrared spectrometer, panoramic camera, neutral atomic detector, and ground penetrating radar were power-up accordingly to plan, and the ground station received the payload data transmission as normal.

The lander has completed at 12 o'clock on May 11 lunar night setting and enter sleep mode. During the fifth lunar day, the lander working conditions were normal. The payload of lunar neutrons and radiation dose detectors and low-frequency radio spectrometers were working as planned, and the ground station receiving scientific detection data was normal.

The Chang'e-4 project's ground operation team has handed over the latest payload scientific data to the scientific research core team, with a total data volume of 6.6 GB and a total of 494 data files. In the follow-up, ground scientific researchers will conduct professional processing and analysis on the acquired scientific detection data.

 

[JSCh]

China's lunar rover travels over 190 meters on moon's far side
Source: Xinhua| 2019-05-11 21:11:22|Editor: ZX

BEIJING, May 11 (Xinhua) -- China's lunar rover Yutu-2 has driven 190.66 meters on the far side of the moon to conduct scientific exploration on the virgin territory.

Both the lander and the rover of the Chang'e-4 probe switched to dormant mode for the lunar night on Saturday, according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration.

China's Chang'e-4 probe, launched on Dec. 8, 2018, made the first-ever soft landing on the Von Karman Crater in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the moon on Jan. 3.

A lunar day equals 14 days on Earth, a lunar night the same length. The Chang'e-4 probe switches to dormant mode during lunar night due to lack of solar power.

During the fifth lunar day of the probe on the moon, the scientific instruments on the lander and rover worked well. A total of 6.6GB of scientific detection data has been sent to the core research team for analysis.

As a result of the tidal locking effect, the moon's revolution cycle is the same as its rotation cycle, and the same side always faces Earth.

The far side of the moon has unique features, and scientists expect Chang'e-4 could bring breakthrough findings.

The scientific tasks of the Chang'e-4 mission include low-frequency radio astronomical observation, surveying the terrain and landforms, detecting the mineral composition and shallow lunar surface structure and measuring neutron radiation and neutral atoms.

The Chang'e-4 mission embodies China's hope to combine wisdom in space exploration with four payloads developed by the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Saudi Arabia.

 

[JSCh]

NEWS AND VIEWS * 15 MAY 2019
The Moon’s mantle unveiled
An in situ investigation on the far side of the Moon has identified materials that might have originated from the lunar mantle. The results could lead to improved models of how the Moon formed and evolved.

Patrick Pinet

The Moon is a small planetary body that has separated into a crust, a mantle and a core, but has not been disturbed by plate tectonics. It is therefore of tremendous value for understanding the evolution of planetary interiors. However, the composition of the lunar mantle remains uncertain. In January, the Chinese spacecraft Chang’e-4 landed in a large impact crater on the far side of the Moon and deployed its rover, Yutu2. Writing in Nature, Li et al.1 use spectral observations by Yutu2 to infer the presence of olivine and low-calcium pyroxene — minerals that might have originated in the lunar mantle.

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Similar to the other inner bodies of the Solar System, the Moon is thought to have gone through a magma-ocean phase, in which it was partially or completely molten2,3. As the magma ocean solidified, dense mafic (rich in magnesium and iron) minerals such as olivine and low-calcium pyroxene crystallized at the ocean’s base. After three-quarters of the ocean had solidified, less dense minerals such as plagioclase (aluminium silicate) floated to the surface, which led to the formation of a highland crust composed mainly of calcium-rich plagioclase. And at the end of the ocean’s solidification, minerals enriched in elements that were the last to enter the solid phase crystallized beneath the crust. This process therefore induced radial stratification — a series of compositionally distinct layers — in the lunar interior.

Despite regional variations in the Moon’s crust4, the observed composition and mineralogy of distinct surface regions called lunar terranes — as revealed by sensors on orbiting satellites and by samples returned to Earth — are consistent with this conceptually simple model of formation. However, the characteristics of the lunar mantle, especially in terms of its composition, structure and stratification, remain uncertain and poorly documented. Astonishingly, NASA’s Apollo spacecraft and the Soviet Union’s Luna probes, all of which landed on the near side of the Moon (Fig. 1a), did not return samples of the lunar mantle5.

Figure 1 | Successful soft Moon landings and lunar topography. a, Previous missions to the Moon have landed on the near side. The coloured dots represent landing sites of spacecraft launched by various countries. The colour scale depicts the altitude of the lunar surface. b, In January, the Chinese spacecraft Chang’e-4 made history by landing in a large impact crater on the Moon’s far side. Li et al.1 use spectral observations by Yutu2, Chang’e-4’s rover, to identify possible mantle-derived materials. The locations of past lunar landings are taken from go.nature.com/2vcecx7.

With the successful implementation of its Queqiao communications satellite, in May 2018, the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program has paved the way for in situ surface exploration and sample-return missions on the lunar far side. The oldest and largest structure on the Moon — the roughly 2,500-kilometre-diameter South Pole–Aitken Basin — is located on the planetary body’s far side. This structure’s size and regional crustal thickness (as estimated by NASA’s GRAIL mission6) suggest that it might have been produced by an impact event that penetrated the Moon’s crust and interior, excavating lunar-mantle material and distributing it on the Moon’s surface. Consequently, in situ exploration of the South Pole–Aitken Basin has long been advocated by scientists internationally.

Li and colleagues describe results obtained by Chang’e-4, which touched down in the 186-km-diameter Von Kármán Crater on the floor of the South Pole–Aitken Basin (Fig. 1b). Their findings are based on the spectra of reflected light that were recorded by Yutu2 as it traversed the Von Kármán Crater. The authors report the detection of materials in the vicinity of the Chang’e-4 landing site that differ markedly from most samples obtained from the Moon’s surface. In particular, the materials contain mafic components that seem to be dominated by a mixture of olivine and low-calcium pyroxene.

The authors suggest that these components represent deep-seated materials, potentially from the lunar mantle, that were excavated when the South Pole–Aitken Basin formed and then, possibly, redistributed as ejecta from the impact event associated with the creation of the nearby 72-km-diameter Finsen Crater. On the basis of these observations, the Moon’s upper mantle might be composed predominantly of both olivine and low-calcium pyroxene.

The methods and tools that Li et al. used for the spectroscopic analyses were handled with great care, and the authors’ detection of the minerals is highly reliable. But the precise determination of the relative mineral abundances in the mineral assemblages — which might include small amounts of plagioclase and high-calcium pyroxene — is a contentious issue, because of the complex nature of the minerals’ overlapping spectral features. Further modelling efforts will certainly be required, with a focus on the size distribution of mineral grains, to attain a well-constrained assessment of the olivine composition7.

In future work, Li et al. should characterize at the landing site not only soil samples but also samples of rock. This task could be carried out through a comprehensive in situexploration of the area that surrounds the Chang’e-4 landing site, with the acquisition of reflectance spectra from selected bedrock targets. Such exploration is also crucial to better document the geological context of the detected materials, so that potential issues that might call into question the authors’ interpretation of their results can be addressed. These issues include the possibility that the impact that created the South Pole–Aitken Basin led to the formation of a massive sheet of melted rock that is tens of kilometres thick and has compositionally distinct layers8,9. Another complexity could arise from the regional emplacement, after the formation of the South Pole–Aitken Basin, of cryptomaria10 (lava flows buried by subsequent crater ejecta).

Nevertheless, Li and colleagues’ results are thrilling and could have considerable implications for characterizing the composition of the Moon’s upper mantle11–13, and for establishing constraints on characteristics of the lunar magma ocean that would have varied with time. Such characteristics include the ocean’s depth, its rate of cooling and its rate of evolution — the latter of which is controlled by magma viscosity, convection processes and the subsequent development of instability. In a broader sense, the authors’ findings might also affect our understanding of the formation and evolution of planetary interiors. It is of the utmost importance to make progress towards unpacking the geology of the lunar far side, expanding our fundamental knowledge of the Moon’s formation and the origin of the crustal asymmetry that exists between its near and far sides14, and preparing future sample-return missions.



The Moon’s mantle unveiled | Nature

Chunlai Li, Dawei Liu, Bin Liu, Xin Ren, Jianjun Liu, Zhiping He, Wei Zuo, Xingguo Zeng, Rui Xu, Xu Tan, Xiaoxia Zhang, Wangli Chen, Rong Shu, Weibin Wen, Yan Su, Hongbo Zhang & Ziyuan Ouyang. Chang’E-4 initial spectroscopic identification of lunar far-side mantle-derived materials. Nature (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1189-0​

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[JSCh]

 

[LKJ86]