NASA lunar orbital probe made the first pictures of the China Chang'e-4 station - two pixels of light

On February 6, 2019, NASA showed the first photographs taken by the LRO probe of the landing site of the Chang'e-4 descent vehicle on the far side of the moon.

The satellite relay Tseuqiao also pleased us with an interesting snapshot of the Moon and Earth from the removal of 70,000 km from Chang'e-4.

At the same time, the Yuytu-2 rover continues its march on the surface (more than 70 meters already skated on the Moon).


Launched by NASA on June 18, 2009, the lunar orbital probe (LRO) continues to be used to obtain a large amount of valuable scientific information.



The current elliptical orbit is LRO (40x199 km), with the nearest orbit point at the South Pole,

According to NASA, the LROC (The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera) modular camera is installed on the LRO — the main optical camera for taking photographs of the lunar surface with a resolution of up to half a meter, with which you will look for suitable places for landing manned expeditions.

LROC consists of three cameras: a low-resolution camera (WAC) and two high-resolution cameras (NAC), the first of which is intended for obtaining general terrain plans, and the other two are for high-resolution photographs.

The modules of the lunar project "Chang'e-4" are located in the crater Karman.



The diameter of the crater Karman is 186 km, its maximum depth reaches 3 km. It is a very ancient shock formation. The crater Carman is over 4 billion years old.

The image of the Pocket crater, on top of which is superimposed a photograph taken by the Chang'e-4 apparatus during the landing:





The LRO probe flew past Pocket Crater on January 30, 2019 (the probe had to be turned 70 degrees to the west in order to be able to take a picture of the surface in the Chang'e-4 landing area, as during the normal shooting of the camera surface of the probe, they are directed straight down, but flew too far to the east of the target, so that it would get into the frame ) and took a picture of the larger module of the Chang'e-4 project from a distance of 330 km (on the east side).

Thank you Lexxnech for the comment .

But even from this distance, the Chang'e-4 landing platform occupies only two pixels in the image and looks like a bright white dot, and the large crater is left in the middle of the photo, 3900 meters wide and 600 meters deep:



The large crater on the right below the arrows has a width of 440 meters:



Photos from LRO in high resolution (141MB, full-resolution) can be found here .

To understand the size of the photo, the data on the module "Chang'e-4":

- the Chang'e-4 descent module (4.4 meters between opposite landing legs, weight 1200 kg.);



- Yuytu-2 rover (height 1 meter, width 1 meter (without solar batteries), 1.5 meters in length, two folding solar panels, six wheels, weight 140 kg.).



And here is how the LRO probe earlier took pictures of the Chang'e-3 modules on the visible side of the moon.





We are still waiting for new photos from NASA if they can bring the LRO probe to a more successful trajectory for obtaining data at a slightly higher resolution, at least as from Chang'e-3.

Also, an updated map of the route of the “Yuuta-2” rover on the lunar surface appeared, and its movement data after the moonlit night was added:



As you can see, the six-wheeled “Yuuta-2” rover has already traveled more than 70 meters on the surface of the moon, carefully avoiding obstacles.

I really hope that in the near future the fate of the first “Yuuta” rover will not suffer.

Satellite transponder "Tseyutsyao" sent an interesting photo:


The main problem is that the reverse side is never visible from Earth, due to the phenomenon of tidal capture. This means that there must be a satellite outside the moon for transmitting messages between ground tracking stations and the spacecraft.

The Tseutqiao repeater satellite (triage bridge), launched in May 2018, operates in halo-orbit around a special gravitationally stable Lagrange point L2, from which it can maintain direct visibility with the Earth and the lunar back side at any time for the organization radio communication project "Chang'e-4".



The Chinese portal "System of publications and collection of scientific data and studies of the lunar and deep space" has also earned, on which the obtained data and images from Chang'e-4 (and earlier missions) will be published and processed.
Path to the portal :
http://202.106.152.98:8081/moondata/