China's Space Program News Thread

[escobar]

Shiyan Weixing-5 sat has been launched...

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[SampanViking]

The Chinese are launching and will land a Lunar Rover - Jade Rabbit - next month.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Is China planning a serious series of Moon missions with a view to a substantial Lunar programme in its own right, or is the Moon simply being as a convenient test bed pending heading to Mars along with everybody else (or so it seems). Maybe both.

 

[chuck731]

The Chinese are launching and will land a Lunar Rover - Jade Rabbit - next month.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Is China planning a serious series of Moon missions with a view to a substantial Lunar programme in its own right, or is the Moon simply being as a convenient test bed pending heading to Mars along with everybody else (or so it seems). Maybe both.

I think even the Chinese don't know for sure. The Chinese space program seem to be very methodical and step by relatively small step. The next step isn't fully decided until the last step has been fully executed and evaluated. This is a very different approach from heydays of NASA, where the grand plan, involving multiple technological "big bang"s along the way, is set out well in advance, and there was a significant gamble that each step along the way would work out satisfactorily so long as enough money and human capital is thrown at it.

With extremely strong engineering staff and truly outstanding project management, NASA style can produce spectacular results, as it did during Mercury/Gemini/Apollo Days. But that kind of synergestic engineering strength and project management quality can't be sustained in a competitive market when the direct economic return from prestige space projects is questionable.

In some ways, I think NASA has become the victim of its own unsustainable success from back in the Apollo days. Expectation has ever since been that NASA ought to produce technically spectacular results rapidly, and go on doing so forever. Because the conditions required for that is unsustainable and faded rapidly, NASA has been failing to live fully up to expectation ever since Apollo, and it could not be otherwise.

In the long run, I think the Chinese style is less spectacular and crowd pleasing, but by taking a risk reducing pace instead of race winning pace, and by managing expectation to a sustainable level of results, the Chinese program is probably more economical and sustainable in the long run.

 

[Equation]

The Chinese are launching and will land a Lunar Rover - Jade Rabbit - next month.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Is China planning a serious series of Moon missions with a view to a substantial Lunar programme in its own right, or is the Moon simply being as a convenient test bed pending heading to Mars along with everybody else (or so it seems). Maybe both.

I've watched the CCTV from last night where the YUTU (Jade Rabbit) lunar probe was supposed to be carrying an optical telescope as well looking into the galaxy from the surface. It was supposedly the first probe to ever attempt at it.

China is scheduled to launch its third lunar probe with a rover named Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, which will land on the lunar surface in early December.

The lunar probe, Chang'e-3, will land on the moon in December if everything is successful, Wu Zhijian, spokesman with the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence, said Tuesday.

Chang'e-3, encompassing a lander and a moon rover, will mark the first time a Chinese spacecraft soft-lands on the surface of an extraterrestrial body.

The rover's name was decided after a worldwide online poll, said Li Benzheng, deputy commander-in-chief of China's lunar program at the conference. Yutu is a symbol derived from a myth about a beauty who flew to the moon.

During the mission, the moon vehicle will explore moon geomorphology and geology as well as available resources.

The mission will send optical telescopes to the moon's surface to carry out space observations. "It's the first time for China to do it and no other countries did that before," said Li, adding it will help the observation of the Sun and add to knowledge of the Earth's environmental change in space.

Wang Chi, a director of the Center for Space Science and Applied Research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences said Tuesday that Chinese scientists have made technological breakthroughs for the Chang'e-3 mission, such as soft-landing technology and remote control systems, while "more than 80 percent of the technologies adopted in the mission are new."

China is set to establish a permanent space station by 2020 and eventually send a human to the moon and the Chang'e-3 mission is a very important step.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[Quickie]

Hopefully, the Yutu will be able to send back some high quality pictures, or even video, of the moon surface and also planets, stars and galaxies. The moon rovers/landers of the 1970s, for some technical reason or other, were unable to send back pictures of the quality you would expect even by the standard of the era.

 

[escobar]

CE-3 control center at BACC...

[video=youtube;xZIQ_Cxv5Uc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZIQ_Cxv5Uc#t=0[/video]

 

[Equation]

Hopefully, the Yutu will be able to send back some high quality pictures, or even video, of the moon surface and also planets, stars and galaxies. The moon rovers/landers of the 1970s, for some technical reason or other, were unable to send back pictures of the quality you would expect even by the standard of the era.

I know, I hope so too. If it does, than that means technically an optical telescope station permanently on the lunar surface is possible.

 

[xiabonan]

I just love the way our government and space agencies name these satellites/probes/rovers. The Chang'E, as you may know, is the symbolic goddess who lived on the moon in ancient Chinese mythology, and she has a Jade Rabbit (Yutu) that she kinda raises as a pet and helps her to grind herbs. That's where the name Yutu for the Lunar probe came from. The same thing goes for the Tian Gong which you all know stand for Heavenly Palace. China's Kuafu project which observes the Sun's activities, is named after a mythical ancient giant who chased after the Sun. I think these names represent a way we pay our tribute to our culture and ancestors, and in a sense "fulfills" the ancient Chinese people's fantasies of the sky and the worlds beyond.

On a side-note, I hope if there's a future lunar observatory/permanent base, it can be named "Guang Han", which is the palace that Chang'E lived in

 

[solarz]

The Chinese are launching and will land a Lunar Rover - Jade Rabbit - next month.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Is China planning a serious series of Moon missions with a view to a substantial Lunar programme in its own right, or is the Moon simply being as a convenient test bed pending heading to Mars along with everybody else (or so it seems). Maybe both.

A moon base would be a useful springboard from which to launch Mars missions. In addition to testing space-faring craft, launching shuttles from the moon requires a lot less energy than launching from Earth.

However, I feel that Mars should not be the next objective. The planet we should look to colonize should be Venus.

 

[escobar]

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Shortly after China’s Chang’e-3 spacecraft departs Earth to land on the Moon, ESA’s network of tracking stations will swing into action, providing crucial support for the vessel’s five-day lunar cruise.

China’s Chang’e-3, named after the mythological goddess of the Moon, is scheduled for lift off on 1 December from the Xichang launch base in China’s Sichuan province on a journey to deposit a lander and a six-wheeled rover on the lunar surface.

The landing, in the Sea of Rainbows on 14 December, will be the first since Russia’s Luna-24 in 1976.

Immediately after liftoff, ESA’s station in Kourou, French Guiana, will start receiving signals from the mission and uploading commands on behalf of the Chinese control centre.

The tracking will run daily throughout the voyage to the Moon. Then, during descent and after landing, ESA’s deep-space stations will pinpoint the craft’s path and touchdown. “We are proud that the expertise of our ground station and flight dynamics teams and the sophisticated technologies of our worldwide Estrack network can assist China to deliver a scientifically important lander and rover to the Moon,” says ESA’s Thomas Reiter, Director for Human Spaceflight and Operations.

“Whether for human or robotic missions, international cooperation like this is necessary for the future exploration of planets, moons and asteroids, benefitting everyone.” The effort is being run from the Estrack Control Centre in ESA’s European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany.

Chang’e-3 liftoff is set for around 18:00 GMT on 1 December, and the 15 m-diameter dish in Kourou will pick up the first signals around 18:44 GMT.

Working with Chinese tracking stations, Kourou will support the mission through lunar orbit entry on 6 December continuing until just prior to its descent to the surface, expected around mid-day on 14 December.

The landing and rover operations on the Moon will be commanded via two Chinese tracking stations at Kashi, in the far west of China, and at Jiamusi, in the northeast.

“After the lander and rover are on the surface, we will use our 35 m-diameter deep-space antennas at Cebreros, Spain, and New Norcia, Australia, to provide ‘delta-DOR’ location measurement,” says Erik Soerensen, responsible for external mission tracking support at ESOC.

“Using this delta-DOR technique, you can compute locations with extreme accuracy, which will help our Chinese colleagues to determine the precise location of the lander.”

Together with Cebreros, New Norcia will record Chang’e-3’s radio signals during landing, which will help the Chinese space agency to reconstruct the trajectory for future reference.

A team of engineers from China will be on hand in Darmstadt. “While we’re very international at ESOC, hardly anyone speaks Mandarin, so having Chinese colleagues on site will really help in case of any unforeseen problems,” says Erik. “Both sides are using international technical standards to enable our stations and ESOC to communicate with their mission and ground systems."