Chinese Lunar Probe Lands Successfully

China's Chang'e 3 moon probe made its intended landing earlier today, setting down softly in the moon's Sinus Iridum, as reported by Reuters. From the article: "The Chang'e 3, a probe named after a lunar goddess in traditional Chinese mythology, is carrying the solar-powered Yutu, or Jade Rabbit buggy, which will dig and conduct geological surveys. ... China Central Television (CCTV) broadcast images of the probe's location on Saturday and a computer generated image of the probe on the surface of the moon on its website. The probe and the rover are expected to photograph each other tomorrow. ... The Bay of Rainbows was selected because it has yet to be studied, has ample sunlight and is convenient for remote communications with Earth, Xinhua said. The rover will be remotely controlled by Chinese control centers with support from a network of tracking and transmission stations around the world operated by the European Space Agency (ESA)."

Comments

Kicking up the lundar dust

[tttonyyy]

Interestingly, this landing may affect NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer operation:

http://www.space.com/23675-china-moon-lander-trouble-nasa-ladee.html

Re:Kicking up the lundar dust

[NReitzel]

Not even the Chinese can claim a planet.

Re:Kicking up the lundar dust

[tttonyyy]

Not even the Chinese can claim a planet.

It's a moon, not a planet, but since we're talking on your level... if you look on the other side there is a huge "MADE IN CHINA" sign and a big array of bitcoin ASICs that they used for their 51% attack. More hashing power than Uruguay. That's how they bought the fake landing sets off NASA!

Re:Kicking up the lundar dust

[K. S. Kyosuke]

When that happens, nobody will be able to say that the Chinese landing was a fake. Or, more likely, the conspiracy theorists will say that USA and China are colluding in secret to mutually corroborate their respective fakes.

Re:Kicking up the lundar dust

[Runaway1956]

Not even the English can claim a continent, right?

Anyone can claim any damned thing they like. If they are the only people around, they get to set the rules. If China puts a crew up there, with orders to confiscate the US flags already there, and replace them with Chinese flags, WTF are we going to do about it? Run to the United Nations, to whine and snivel?

Re:Kicking up the lundar dust

[thrillseeker]

You only own what you can defend.

Re:Kicking up the lundar dust

[AJWM]

Dust? Seriously?

This is high vacuum we're talking about. Lunar dust is just tiny rocks, they get kicked up and immediately fall back to the surface. It's not as though the dust is going to float for days (or even minutes) in the (virtually non-existent) lunar atmosphere. (Sure sign of badly written SF or shot-in-a-studio movie footage: dust on the real Moon doesn't cloud, it sprays then drops.)

Sure, the exhaust plume gases will stick around for a bit. That will give LADEE something to help calibrate its instruments against, since presumably the reaction products are known.

Re: Kicking up the lundar dust

[AJWM]

While the Outer Space Treaty has some things to say about it (the Moon Treaty was never ratified, or even signed by many of the players), historically the rules of precedence for establishing claim over new lands has been:
1. First to spot it.
2. First to plant a flag on it (which historically implied setting foot)
3. First to set up a base or fort on it
4. First to establish a settlement (ie, permanent habitation) on it.

With "right of ownership" proceeding in the above order. Robotic flag planting as we've had since the mid 1960's might be step 1.5, which is where China is at. USA was at 3 for a brief time in 1969-72 (since the later Apollo missions had surface stays of several days) although disclaimed it with the "we came in peace for all mankind" verbiage on the landing plaques.

If/when China establishes a manned base on the Moon, is there going to be anyone in a position to argue about it (beyond stern words at the UN and threats to remove "Most Favored Nation" trading status) if they claim ownership?

Re:Kicking up the lundar dust

[Adriax]

China is cashing in on that debt quite often, buying up american businesses and the physical assets associated with.
Trading land for trinkets is a time honored american tradition.

Re:Kicking up the lundar dust

[Jeremi]

LOL. What some people (mainly americans) fail to see is that China could quite happily not have you as an economic partner? Why? Because you never actually pay, you're just racking up credit.

As the aphorism goes: If you owe your bank $10,000, you have a problem. If you owe your bank $10,000,000, your bank has a problem.

I doubt the Chinese are going to do anything that might significantly increase the risk of a default on their loans to the USA.

Re:Kicking up the lundar dust

[0123456]

The article failed to mention the fact that the Chang'e 3 turned off all propulsion systems at the height of 3 meters above surface, then let it drop like a rock and risk damage to high tech equipments just to reduce dust.

You do realize that's about the equivalent of dropping 'high tech equipments' from eighteen inches on Earth, right? My girlfriend has dropped the netbook further than that on many occasions.

Re: Kicking up the lundar dust

[GumphMaster]

If we are discounting prehistoric claimants (much as the Europeans did at the time in discounting the native population)... the continent of Australia. Dutch, French, Portuguese and other groups had found parts of the continent prior to Cook's flag planting and claim of the eastern regions in 1770. The first British colony exploiting the explicit claim was established in 1788 (Sydney). The British claim stuck and it was not challenged in any substantive way. The French claimed western Australia (1772) and the Dutch Van Diemen's Land (modern Tasmania, 1642) but neither nation settled or defended these claims in material ways when challenged by British settlement.

New Zealand is an another example that comes close, although the French did manage to create a settlement on purchased land there (Akaroa) and Mori settlement occurred inside the time span of documented European history.

First

[Dan East]

In case anyone cares, the first soft moon landing was on January 31, 1966 by the Soviet lander Lana-9. It still boggles my mind how they were able to achieve that without anything remotely resembling a modern computing device.

Re:First

[fisted]

Sorry to break it to you but they did have turing-complete machines in '66, which do more than ``remotely resemble'' modern computing devices, as the fundamental principles didn't change.

Re:First

[Trepidity]

Nitpick: the name is Luna-9.

The first landing of any kind (a crash landing), was the Soviet Luna-2 in 1959. The U.S. then sent a series of crash-impact spacecraft in the early 1960s, the Ranger series, whose goal was to take photos during the final descent, along with testing out systems. Five of the nine Ranger missions successfully impacted the moon, and three of them managed to send back photos.

Then as you note, Luna-9 was the first non-crash landing, in 1966.

Re:First

[Dan East]

Are you saying that Luna-9 was controlled by a Turing-complete computer? From what I can discover it only had a programmable timing device, which would trigger a fixed list of tasks after variable delays. Stuff like shutting off the main engines was done by a physical switch that detected when the lander was just above the surface. I stand by my comment that it was not controlled by anything remotely resembling a modern computer.

Re:First

[Thagg]

Curiously, in my youth in the 60's, we referred to Luna-9 as a "hard landing", and the first "soft landing" was Surveyor 1 three months later. Now, it's clear that the Luna 9 lander really was a soft landing (similar to the landings of the Mars Pathfinder and Spirit/Opportunity rovers) and we were just ragging on the Soviets.

Re:First

[rasmusbr]

In case anyone cares, the first soft moon landing was on January 31, 1966 by the Soviet lander Lana-9. It still boggles my mind how they were able to achieve that without anything remotely resembling a modern computing device.

There were plenty of good analog designers available back then.

They probably basically used one or several analog control systems to control the descent based on signals from a radar and one or several gyros. The landing sequence could have been terminated on landing by a simple mechanical switch.

Come to think of it, the Moon is just about close enough that they could potentially have landed it by hand if the craft was sending back it's radar signal and gyro signals to Earth.

Re:First

[hey!]

May have been. The Russians have always had a lot of great mathematicians, and they certainly understood the concepts. They had a significant computer industry, often copying western systems to be sure, but they were certainly could and did make their own designs going all the way back to the 50s.

Anyhow, they wouldn't have needed to Turing complete machines. In many ways back in the 60s specialized circuits might have been simpler and more robust. By the mind 60s they had ballistic missiles with multiple, independently targeted reentry vehicles, so they clearly had a lot of capability when it came to guidance systems. In some ways a lunar landing controller would have been simpler than MIRV guidance.

Re:First

[david.given]

As an interesting addendum:

Luna-9's pictures were sent back using one of the standard encodings used for wireless newspaper photography transmission. During the transmission, the Jodrell Bank radio telescope in the United Kingdom was listening in (well, wouldn't you?) and the astronomers there recognised the encoding, phoned someone at the Daily Express, and as a result the first pictures from the surface of the moon ever were printed in a British newspaper while the USSR was still wondering what to do with them.

There is some speculation that the encoding scheme was picked deliberately to make sure this happened...

Re:First

[wjcofkc]

Luna 9 did not have a computer. It was all careful launch timing and Newtonian mechanics to ensure it got where it needed to be and deployed what it needed to precisely when it needed to. The closest thing it had to a computer was a clock that made these things happen at precise intervals. From Wikipedia:

The lander had a mass of 99 kilograms (220 lb). It used a landing bag to survive the impact speed of 22 kilometres per hour (14 mph).[2] It was a hermetically sealed container with radio equipment, a program timing device, heat control systems, scientific apparatus, power sources, and a television system.

If the whole thing weighed 220 lbs., where would you even fit a meaningful 1966 computer? Never underestimate persistent human beings.

Re:First

[arth1]

Five of the nine Ranger missions successfully impacted the moon

Does that mean that four of them missed?

Re:First

[ballpoint]

Five of the nine Ranger missions successfully impacted the moon

Does that mean that four of them missed?

No, the other four impacted unsuccessfully.

Re:First

[Trepidity]

Two of them actually did miss, and are now orbiting the sun in deep space. The other two didn't get far enough to miss.

Ranger 1 and 2 were botched launches, which barely made it into space into unstable low-earth orbits, from which they burned up on reentry shortly thereafter.

Ranger 3 did in fact miss the moon. It successfully launched to high-earth orbit, and then successfully boosted out of high-earth orbit towards the moon. But not quite towards the moon enough. It missed the moon by 22,000 miles and flew past it into deep space.

Ranger 4 was the first successful mission. And then Ranger 5 missed again, this time by a much smaller amount, only 450 miles. The exit from high-earth orbit towards the moon appears to have been reasonably good this time, and any minor trajectory errors were supposed to be fixed in a mid-course corrective burn. But the craft lost power after exiting earth orbit, so was unable to make the mid-course correction, causing it to miss.

More info in the usual place.

Re:First

[DerekLyons]

Luna 9 did not have a computer. It was all careful launch timing and Newtonian mechanics to ensure it got where it needed to be and deployed what it needed to precisely when it needed to. The closest thing it had to a computer was a clock that made these things happen at precise intervals.

A certain amount of luck was involved too... a couple of feet more per second error, and that timer (pre-programmed on the ground before flight) could have been hopelessly out of sync with what was actually happening.
 

If the whole thing weighed 220 lbs., where would you even fit a meaningful 1966 computer?

SLBM guidance computers of the era weighed in at around forty to sixty pounds. Gemini's onboard guidance computer tipped the scales at a hair under sixty pounds. The Apollo guidance computer (directly descend from an SLBM system) weighed seventy pounds.
 
Not that they had one, or the Soviets were that advanced of course, but not all meaningful computers available in the sixties were room sized behemoths weighing tons.

Collaboration - YAY!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm happy that the ESA is willing to let the Chinese to use their transmission infrastructure. This way hopefully more science will be done.

Images from the surface

[mbone]

There is a cool animated gif of the descent imager pictures of the landing, and a false color image of the surface.

Re:They have the money to do this

[ArbitraryName]

China has no debt? Really? China is no paragon of fiscal virtue, they're barreling down the road to financial ruin unless they do some significant restructuring.

Re:They have the money to do this

[HornWumpus]

The real question is how the Chinese intend to continue their exchange rate manipulation (aka the peg) without buying lots of treasuries.

The exchange rate moving to a free market will change the world. In the meantime China will learn the downside of keeping it's exports cheap.

If the mission failed ...

[guanxi]

I genuinely hope it is successful. The rise of China is one of the great humanitarian stories in history, lifting hundreds of millions from poverty. I expect the people of China to make great contributions to the world.

However, it's still 2013 and China's government is still authoritarian, unaccountable and non-transparent, and the Chinese press is still restricted. If the mission failed, would they admit it, or release some photos anyway? (Could they get away with it? Could other governments or amateurs with telescopes see for themselves?)

Re:If the mission failed ...

[gerddie]

If the mission failed, would they admit it, or release some photos anyway? (Could they get away with it?)

No, because ESA helps during the whole mission.

Re:If the mission failed ...

[ihtoit]

(...Could other governments or amateurs with telescopes see for themselves?)

No, because the probe is just too damn small.

None of them can see it. The probe (or to borrow another local example, the Apollo 11 flag) is far too small to be seen with any telescope on Earth, or even the Hubble space telescope (which is in low Earth orbit).

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (orbiting the Moon) took pictures of the Apollo 11 landing site, however. It showed a long shadow cast by the lower lander stage, but not the stage itself - again, it's just too small.

You can approximate the angular size of an object by dividing its width by its distance from the telescope:

A galaxy might be around 100,000 light years in diameter. At a distance of ten billion light years, it would have an angular size of:
(100,000 light years) / (10,000,000,000 light years) = 0.00001 radians. HST can (and has) taken images containing *millions* of these galaxies.

Now we do the same for a flag on the Moon, generously estimated as 1 metre in width:
(1 metre) / (384,400,000 meters) = 0.0000000026 radians

Well, look at that. Seeing the flag requires about 3800 times the resolving power needed to see the galaxy. Who would have guessed?

This is something that *cannot* be done optically. The wavelength of visible light is just too long. By about 3800 times the wavelength needed. Now we're in high-energy cosmic ray (X-Ray in the Gigawatts) range.

Re:They have the money to do this

[Runaway1956]

What about money? We have resources lying around the country already - both human and material. We have the ability to do it all over again, any time.

What we lack, is backbone, initiative, the dream, the drive, the balls. Our leaders today are less than men, and there seem to be no real men to run the worthless bastards out of power.

Money. Money is important, in it's own right, but money doesn't control our ability to aim high. That ability is only governed by our lack of courage.

Re:They have the money to do this

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the women can do it instead?

Obligatory Pun

[bradorsomething]

It is only a matter of time until they wok on the moon.

Greatest humanitarian stories?

[SuperKendall]

The rise of China is one of the great humanitarian stories in history

I think it's great the Chinese were successful at landing on the moon, but... greatest humanitarian stories in history??? Do you remember just how many TENS OF MILLIONS of people died during the communist takeover and resulting purges? Or the famines?

Re:Greatest humanitarian stories?

[the gnat]

greatest humanitarian stories in history??? Do you remember just how many TENS OF MILLIONS of people died [paulbogdanor.com] during the communist takeover and resulting purges? Or the famines?

I think the GP was referring to the post-1980 era, which really was a great humanitarian story, especially compared to the 30 years preceding it. The Economist magazine uses phrases like this all the time, and there's never any question about what they're referring to.

Re:They have the money to do this

[HornWumpus]

Not good enough. They would drive up the currencies in the gold producing regions, not the dollar and euro as they need.

Re: They have the money to do this

[WaywardGeek]

For guys my age (I turned 50 last week), the first Moon walk was a pivotal event. July of 1969... I was 6 years old, and my father was a squadron commander in the 318th Fighter Squadron flying F-102s, and I lived on Cherry Hill on the Air Force base in Anchorage Alaska. We all watched the first steps taken on the Moon, and as the son of an Air Force fighter pilot, there were high expectations for me. I remember when pilots where heros. Everyone expected even greater things from my generation.

We totally let them down, at least in terms of space exploration. I blame politics, and to some extent NASA (though mostly because of politics). I also have my hopes pinned on commercial efforts like SpaceX. We were on the Moon in 1969, while people in China were still starving. I'm glad China has revived some of the dream, and I hope they do well. In the meantime, our generation gave birth to personal computers and cell phones, so it's not a total loss, but there never was another OMG moment like the Moon walk.

Re:They have the money to do this

[GenieGenieGenie]

Your leaders, sir, have been put there by voters. One of those voters may even have been you. So don't put the blame on them. In democratic and pseudo-democratic countries, leaders are just reflections of their populaces.

Oh, and just to make sure you don't think this comes from some partisan BS, the other side would have done precisely the same thing.

Now go and get yourself a serious government.

Re:Welcome to the 20th century China!

[couchslug]

"The US has to step up its game!"

Not really. If we are wise we'll work on the automated remote-manned systems we must have to interact with the permanently hostile environement of outer space and let others who don't have to overspend to protect crews send meat tourists first.

That humanity get into space would be useful, but that doesn't mean every nation should pursue it the same way.

Successful terrestrial exploration relied on cheap expendable ships and expendable crews. Life was cheap and so was wood.

Now it costs so much to protect a few humans to US/EU standards there is no advantage to sending them. However, robots are useful on Terra and in space, so there is every reason to send them. Robot development cycles can be rapid and they are ideal for risk-taking without the human drama.

Re:They have the money to do this

[0123456]

Your leaders, sir, have been put there by voters.

No, they've been put there by the people who get to choose who's on the ballot, mostly by throwing tons of money to ensure one of their kind of people wins. You can hardly blame the voters when they're given a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledumber.

Nothing else comes to mind post 1980???

[SuperKendall]

I think the GP was referring to the post-1980 era, which really was a great humanitarian story.

Oh yeah, that was Awesome!

Sorry, but pairing the term "China" with "Humanitarian" just doesn't jibe with any period of time you care to name. Any lifting of the Chinese people has pretty much been accomplished by their own efforts, not the Chinese government...

Re:They have the money to do this

[HornWumpus]

Already did. Which is why we cause inflation in China when we print dollars. Perverse economic incentives abound.

Re:Oh, please.

[HornWumpus]

They just won't do anything with you.

Re: They have the money to do this

[DerekLyons]

We totally let them down, at least in terms of space exploration. I blame politics, and to some extent NASA (though mostly because of politics).

It's funny that you blame politics for "letting us down" with regards to space exploration, but fail to acknowledge it's responsibility for getting us there in the first place.
 
No, scratch that. It's not funny. It's frightening as hell that you're either so ill informed or so blithely unaware of what really happened and why.

Amazing success!

[Reliable Windmill]

Amazing! Congratulations to China, the whole world is proud of you! You will be at the forefront of space exploration, and if there is anyone who can establish a permanent base on the moon it is you. The 21st century belongs to China, no doubt!

Re:They have the money to do this

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you Chinese government troll.

There have been plenty of economic collapses over the years, and in every case SOMEONE has predicted it.

Re:::yawn::

[cusco]

If Luna were in orbit around Mars, Venus or Mercury it's large enough we would consider them a double-planet system. It really isn't much smaller than Mercury, no other planet has a moon that is such a large percentage of its mass.

Although really, a tweet? Even GW Bush can tweet, it's not like it's hard. There are frelling security cameras here on Earth that do more complex things than that several hundred times a day. When it can decide, "That rock looks interesting enough to deviate from my pre-programmed path to investigate it," then I'll be impressed.

and NOAA reports

[nairatinu]

it was immediately surrounded by a cloud of smog

Re: They have the money to do this

[cusco]

consists of Russian technology

So what? If the Chinese want to build an aircraft should the reinvent the airfoil as well, so that it doesn't "consist of US technology"? Really? Technology progresses by building on what went before, if it works you use it and you add to it. It's just bizarre that I keep hearing this same stupid non sequitur every time the topic of the Chinese space program comes up. "They're using Soviet/US/EU technology!" Big fucking deal.

Re:Cost and Benefit

[Runaway1956]

" What we are is re-tooling for the future."

Yes, I can see that the United States is re-tooling. And, there is little if any room permitted for exploration or expansion.

Have you looked very seriously at the bulk of non-terrorism related legislation and treaty making lately? It's all about carving up the "intellectual property" biosphere among big corporations. Take a look at the neoconservative movement, which represented a moderately large part of conservative people and corporations. Their basic dream, was to have all the men, women, and children of the world working directly or indirectly for Wall Street.

Legislation related to terrorism tends to support that biosphere. Hacking into a corporate computer today is equated to terrorism. Reverse engineering some code is illegal, and can be deemed a criminal offense.

We live in an introspective society, dedicated to two goals: The accumulation of wealth in very few pockets, and preservation of the status quo.

Needless to say, I don't like what I can see of our future.

Re: They have the money to do this

[dbIII]

consists of Russian technology

That's how Americans get to the ISS these days. There's no shame in it.

Re: They have the money to do this

[dbIII]

Inform us then.
Tell us why Skylab fell despite there being enough bits of Saturn V and years to do something about it. It looked a lot like politics to me.

Re:They have the money to do this

[Clsid]

The WSJ? Really, a bunch of conservatives writing about the demise of a country they perceive as a threat. LOL.

I'm in China and all I can tell you is that you still haven't even seen half of what's coming. The only issue I see is the high cost to acquire real estate, but the Chinese being what they are, just tackle the issue by making it a top priority or a must in a family to buy the house first and then get married. So the main thing is that they are used to a lot of hardships Western people would not be able to endure for a week, especially the jobs where they treat you like crap and only pay 3000 yuans. But by basically eating 10 yuan noodles every day and actually saving as much as they can, the Chinese thrive. Sorry but humankind need to go through periods of crap to become better and the Chinese had their fair share and now they will just keep going up for at least two more generations from what I see. Even the 1-child policy had the unintended effect of making a large portion of the population a lot more educated since families poured all the resources in their single child instead.

So again dude, you still haven't seen the half of it. If you want to get a glimpse, go to Chengdu, the New Century Global building and you will see what I'm talking about.