January 4th, 2019
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China’s lunar rover is driving smoothly on the Moon’s farside. The state-run Xinhua news service explains that the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said late Friday that both the lander and rover are currently gathering data. At 17:00 local time in Beijing, the three 16-foot (5-meter) antennas of the low-frequency radio spectrometer on the lander […]
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NASA’s New Horizons flyby of Ultima Thule (a Kuiper Belt Object beyond Pluto) is an outbound spacecraft carrying a number of “foreign” objects – from Planet Earth. One item onboard is a piece of a past milestone in itself: A section of seat from SpaceShipOne – the first private craft to enter space. SpaceShipOne was […]
China’s Chang’e-4 mission to the farside of the Moon has garnered a number of new China Central Television (CCTV) interviews, revealing details of the pioneering effort and those involved in the undertaking. China’s Yutu-2 (Jade Rabbit-2) lunar rover, which on January 3 (Beijing time) made a historic touchdown on the farside of the Moon together […]
China’s Chang’e-4 is in getting down to business mode as the first controlled farside landing in history on January 3rd (Beijing local time). NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is slated to overfly the area in coming weeks and may possibly spot the Chang’e-4 and its rover. This was done previously for Chang’e-3, the first Chinese […]
China’s Chang’e-4 successfully has made a 12 minute high dive onto the Moon’s farside. According to the state-run Xinhua news service, Chinese space experts chose the Von Kármán crater in the South Pole-Aitken Basin as the landing site of Chang’e-4 on January 3, local time. The area available for the landing is only one eighth […]
From Mark Robinson of Arizona State University, the leader of the NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s LROC super camera: If all goes well, on January 3rd or 4th the Chang’e 4 spacecraft will gently set down on the floor of Von Kármán crater (186 kilometers diameter, 176.2°E, 44.5°S). This will be the second soft landing […]
If all remains on schedule, China’s Chang’e-4 is slated to attempt the first controlled farside landing in history. The target remains the Von Kármán crater, within the South Pole‐Aitken (SPA) basin. The scientific instruments of China’s farside spacecraft, mounted on a lander and a rover, will analyze both surface and subsurface of this […]
China’s Chang’e-4 will shortly nosedive toward a farside of the Moon touchdown. The state-run China Daily reports January 1st that the country’s Chang’e 4 robotic probe is expected to land on the South Pole–Aitken basin on the Moon’s farside sometime between Wednesday and Thursday, citing information from China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, a major […]
There’s an interesting historical side note given China’s imminent, milestone making robotic landing on the farside of the Moon. The U.S. Ranger spacecraft series was a set of kamikaze-like missions, hurled to the Moon to take photos of the lunar surface before a high-speed crash. NASA’s Block 2, Ranger 4 was launched on April 23, […]
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has announced that the country’s Chang’e-4 probe has entered a planned orbit Sunday morning to prepare for the first-ever soft landing on the farside of the Moon. Chang’e-4 entered a new lunar orbit with the low point at roughly 9.3 miles (15 kilometers), and about 62 miles (100 kilometers) […]
