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Chinese Moon Probe Flies By Asteroid Toutatis

Posted by timothy on from the picks-or-it-didn't-happen dept.

hackingbear writes "Chinese moon probe Chang'e-2 made a flyby of the near-earth asteroid Toutatis on December 13 at 16:30:09 Beijing Time (08:30:09 GMT), the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND) announced today. The flyby was the first time an unmanned spacecraft launched from Earth has taken such a close viewing of the asteroid, named after a Celtic god, making China the fourth country after the U.S., the EU and Japan to be able to examine an asteroid by spacecraft. Chang'e-2 came as close as 3.2 km from Toutatis, which is about 7 million km away from the Earth, and took pictures of the asteroid at a relative velocity of 10.73 km per second, the SASTIND said in a statement. Chang'e-2, originally designated as the backup of Chang'e-1, left its lunar orbit for an extended mission to the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrangian point on June 9, 2011, after finishing its lunar objectives, and then again began its mission to Toutatis this year. 'The success of the extended missions also embodies that China now possesses spacecraft capable of interplanetary flight,' said Wu Weiren, chief designer of China's lunar probe program."

8 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. The actual picture by Kergan · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://english.cri.cn/6909/2012/12/15/53s738568.htm

    1. Re:The actual picture by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      They should rename it Potatis.

  2. Re:all i see by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Try clicking the buttons below the cartoon.

  3. By Toutatis! by nospam007 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Le ciel va nous tomber sur la tête!

  4. Wow by Dereck1701 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    [whistles] Wow, how much fuel did they put in that thing? It spent around 8 months in lunar orbit, which usually eats up a bit of fuel right there, even without the several orbital changes they did while there. And then it leaves lunar orbit on its way to the Earth-Sun L2 point? I realize that once you get out of LEO the amount of fuel required to get anywhere (at least slowly) goes down exponentially but they must have packed quite a bit of fuel into that thing (I believe it is roughly the size of a walk in closet)

    1. Re:Wow by mbone · · Score: 5, Informative

      With Weak Stability Boundary theory trajectories you can basically get from a lunar transfer orbit (or either ES or EM L1/2) to anywhere else around without spending any fuel, if you are willing to wait long enough. This pdf presentation should give you the idea.

      Now, in practice you can't do it with no fuel, but if you are willing to be patient, you can do amazing things with a piddling expenditure of delta-V.

  5. Radar did OK by mbone · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you compare this image with the Goldstone image of Toutatis by Earth-based radar - see Figure 1 in Hudson et al - you can see that the Earth radar does OK, but actually going there is better. Toutatis's rotation period is 176 hours, so we won't get to see the other side in the flyby.

    Note that there are a few craters, but not many (asteroid Itokawa has no craters in Hayabusa images), so as usual something is resurfacing the surface.

  6. they don't treat people so dumb by surd1618 · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you follow the link and go three pictures forward (avoiding the ads that appear in the bottom-right corner), then you can see a diagram of the Chang'e 2's flight path, including the part where it orbits the L2 Langrangian. I think in an American publication they'd not want to include that diagram because they'd get too many letters asking 'what the ****' it was.