China's Space Program News Thread

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chuck731

Banned Idiot
The main innovation with Yutu seem to be the lander hovers, examines the landing spots, and picks the best one, before setting down. Other robotic landers seem to just land whereever it happen to end up in a broad target zone and pray it didn't end up on a boulder.

I wonder if the process is entirely automated, or if the image is beamed back to earth and landing decision made manually and beamed back to the lander.
 
Equation

Equation

Lieutenant General
chuck731 said:
I wonder if the process is entirely automated, or if the image is beamed back to earth and landing decision made manually and beamed back to the lander.
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That's good question Chuck. I think it's automated until the lunar rover actually touches the lunar surface is when they go manually. The ground crew from Earth has to see the terrain before deciding what is the best approach and safer patch before making any kind of movement. It's going to be a very calculative and cautious movement and probably boring for us viewers but that's how science and engineers operates.
 
escobar

escobar

Brigadier
The lander descent cameras will take more than 10 000 photos during the descent or approximately 15 frames per second, so that its on-board computer can automatically analyze the terrain and choose autonomously the landing area is 10m x 10m. The lander panoramic cameras have a resolution of 4 Megapixel and a designed operational life of 15 days

[video=youtube;PFnprBm1N-w]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFnprBm1N-w#t=0[/video]
 
escobar

escobar

Brigadier
chuck731 said:
The main innovation with Yutu seem to be the lander hovers, examines the landing spots, and picks the best one, before setting down. Other robotic landers seem to just land whereever it happen to end up in a broad target zone and pray it didn't end up on a boulder.

I wonder if the process is entirely automated, or if the image is beamed back to earth and landing decision made manually and beamed back to the lander.
Click to expand...

Yep, entirely automated and CE-3 is said to be the first to use the obstacle avoidance system...
 
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chuck731

Banned Idiot
The thing is round trip timing of radio signals from moon to earth and back is only 2 seconds. There is no ionization blackout during lunar descent because the moon has no atmosphere, so the lander can remain in continuous contact with mission control all the way down to the surface, so it is possible for the lander to beam the picture back to earth and have decision beamed back in time to adjust its landing site.
 
escobar

escobar

Brigadier
t2contra said:
Why haven't we seen any report of of the lander testing its descent on Earth? I don't think they just do their testing on computer simulations.
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China has researched and built a series of special experiment facilities and adopted various advanced testing methods in order to simulate the low-gravity environment and the complicated terrain on the moon.
 
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chuck731

Banned Idiot
escobar said:
China has researched and built a series of special experiment facilities and adopted various advanced testing methods in order to simulate the low-gravity environment and the complicated terrain on the moon.
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Also, Chinese program is not the most transparent of space programs. They don't let everyone know of everything they do.
 
escobar

escobar

Brigadier
The scientific objectives of Chang’e-3: lunar surface topography and geology survey

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

lunar surface material composition and resource survey,

[video=youtube;lwyP8Xh3ljg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwyP8Xh3ljg#t=0[/video]
 
escobar

escobar

Brigadier
Sun-Earth-Moon space environment detection and lunar-based astronomical observation

[video=youtube;lwyP8Xh3ljg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwyP8Xh3ljg#t=0[/video]
 
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