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Chang'e-3 Lunar Rover Landing Slated For 13:40 UTC Saturday

Posted by timothy on from the easy-does-it dept.

savuporo writes "The Chinese Chang'e-3 probe will be landing on the moon [Saturday], 13:40 UTC. CCTV is likely to carry the event live as they did for initial launch. According to technical overview of the mission scenario and instruments, the landing will be fully autonomous with active landing hazard avoidance, which is the first time this has been attempted on any planetary landing. More real-time updates can be found on Twitter with ChangE3 hash tag and NASASpaceFlight forums live event section."

5 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Place your bets... by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Place your bets on something going wrong. Cause you know, China is known for things that explode or catch fire that shouldn't.

    I hoping them the best, sry.

  2. Steaming video link by Zanadou · · Score: 4, Informative

    There's some good live coverage of it here as of right now: http://english.cntv.cn/live/p2p/index.shtml

  3. Re:successful landing by condition-label-red · · Score: 4, Informative

    Solar panels are opening, everything going well!

    Live feed

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    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
  4. Successfully landed by david.given · · Score: 5, Informative

    CCTV's live coverage showed a textbook landing and solar array deployment, including some very shiny live pictures from the descent imager. Next steps are self-testing, instrument deployment and releasing the rover, which they've said will take up to 24 hours. Although I'd imagine that they'll release images from the panoramic mast camera as soon as possible.

  5. China has those problems too ! by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There are lots of other minor issues - bureaucracy, risk aversion, aging workforce.

    I may be an American citizen but I came from China. I still keep track of what's going on inside China.

    From what I know, all the problems that you've outlined above China also got them.

    Bureaucracy
    You just couldn't imagine how bureaucratic the Chinese system is

    Risk Aversion
    Do you know why China's space program schedule is limited to one-spaceship every year ?

    You guess it, risk aversion

    Aging workforce
    All the leading scientists in Chinese space programs are in their 60's, and older. That is because China practically lost an entire generation of scientist due to the social upheaval during the 1950's to the 1970's.

    Yes, a new generation of young scientists are growing up, but they are still seriously lacking in practical experiences.

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    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !