China lands Jade Rabbit robot rover on Moon
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Video: http://english.cntv.cn/live/
Text: http://live.china.org.cn/2013/12/13/coming-soon-change-3-lan...
Landing video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnM-sJ-KbNg
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=33511.0
Edit:
Live stream will be at: http://english.cntv.cn/live/
Planetary Society blog: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/1213091...
The surveillance baseline only has a length of eight hours or so, so they don't have much leeway in actual landing window if they need the touch-down to be visible.
Here's a compilation of latest news ( from yesterday )
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/1213091...
Hope people can put politics aside and appreciate another step forward for humanity and science.
Good luck to all involved!
In fact I think it's how we should solve all our international disputes: First country to put a man on mars gets the South China Sea.
(Thinking of the South Musk Sea)
Nationalism is all we've got to push forward space exploration; While there were initially subtexts involving spy satellites and nuclear weapons, the tech has been there for forty years, and forty years ago we stopped making progress and settled into a holding pattern involving the Shuttle and a modest space station in some sort of 'spirit of cooperation' that is earmark- rather than goal-oriented.
I can only hope China's national inferiority complex is intense enough to propel human beings beyond low earth orbit once more, and shame us out of our hyperpower exceptionalism. Yes, shame - Russia can send someone to the ISS and the US cannot - and without the US feeling ashamed of that, there is no Dragon, no Dream Chaser, no Orion.
Without a political space race, there's no resources for this sort of thing except for the passing billionaire.
What about the Google X-Prize for the moon lander? Several teams are competing. There are certainly other ways to push technologies forward. X-Prizes help. Finding other ways to tap into the $15 trillion US economy would help too.
Edit: Spelling and words.
Or how NASA tried to work with India (Chandrayaan-1 and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) to perform a bistatic radar experiment. I find the idea of two entirely diferent crafts operated by two countries and working together to be fascinating.