Moon landing 2013 (Chang'e 3)

[Scotius]

Gah! I missed everything

[4 IN 1]

any speculation on why Chinese (government) went for early landing? I am SERIOULY impressed how quickly the probe/rover got down.

Possibly the original time is set to going for another orbit for some extra pre-burn testing, but they finished the testes ahead of time.

[Cesrate]

any speculation on why Chinese (government) went for early landing? I am SERIOULY impressed how quickly the probe/rover got down.

Don't know, I'm bathing and completely missed the landing.

And, the time is not decided by government.

[Lohan2008]

Chinese sound worried about the next step of getting rover powered up and whether instruments will work.

Edited December 14, 2013 by Lohan2008

[Raticon]

Every scienstist would be worried that their very first rover would work properly after landing, much like every person at NASA JPL was biting their nails like crazy duting Curiosity's descent, and Spirit and Opportunitys respective landings some 9 years ago.

[Lohan2008]

End of CCTV broadcast, see you all in the morning.

http://english.cntv.cn/live/p2p/index.shtml

[Pulstar]

Any ETA on the rover deployment?

[iDan122]

Expect a Chinese mars mission soon....

[Voidryder]

Congratulations to China! Job well done!

[liweih]

First image from Beijing Flight Control Centre

[Voidryder]

Awesome! Looks like the desert in Arizona...wait a minute...

(My apologies to the Chinese Space Program. I couldn't resist.)

[quasarrgames]

I hope they get lots of cool hi-def pictures of the moon for us or at least some of its rocks, anyway.

[Meithan]

Dammit, missed it. I'm on the road right now. Does anyone have a link so I can watch it later?

[Karriz]

Youtube has many videos of the last minute of landing (240p unfortunately), but I couldn't find the whole thing. I hope I'll get to see the rover deployment live, whenever that happens.

[42undead2]

Now let's wait and see how long until the conspiracies of how they are faked.

[TMS]

First image from Beijing Flight Control Centre

As Communist China knew all along, the moon is actually red.

[deadshot462]

Maybe China accidentally landed on Mars.

[bigdad84]

Maybe China accidentally landed on Mars.

I wouldn't doubt it...

[numerobis]

/giggle

Chinese announcer said "Wover"

I remember a JAXA scientist telling a roomful of us from various agencies about how the "lover" would move over the surface of the asteloid. "Wover" is much less giggle-worthy. But compare their difficulty in enunciating a particular phoneme in English to my utter lack of ability to say even a single word in any dialect of Chinese or Japanese.

As for the landing, awesome!

[zitronen]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfNb0jeTi2s

Here's a recording of the landing coverage.

[lajoswinkler]

Here's a better photo from the surface.

[128MB]

Looks like my backyard after the mole plowing through it!

[zitronen]

Interesting, seems like ESA is helping with coms and tracking!

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Operations/Helping_China_to_the_Moon

[NovaSilisko]

As Communist China knew all along, the moon is actually red.

Presumably due to a mistake with the camera's white balance, or, if we're really lucky, a patch of orange soil like was found during Apollo.

Either way, bring on the "wow nasa hiding moon's real color china giving us the truth, moon is orange wake up sheeple" nutjobs.

[Brotoro]

Good job, China!