‘Jade Rabbit’ is on the Moon
At 1.11pm UTC today (8.11 am EST) the Chang’e-3 mission made a successful soft landing in an area toward the edge of the Sinus Iridum and Mare Imbrium – shown in this image by the red flag.
By Caleb A. Scharf
This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
At 1.11pm UTC today (8.11 am EST) the Chang'e-3 mission made a successful soft landing in an area toward the edge of the Sinus Iridum and Mare Imbrium - shown in this image by the red flag.
Landing site of Chang'e 3 on the Moon (Credit: www.new.cn).
That's on the nearside of the moon - marked in a red ellipse in the figure below.
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Sinus Iridum
Next up will be the attempted deployment of Yutu (Jade Rabbit), a six-wheeled lunar rover - sending back real time video as it's driven across the lunar surface.
You can read more details here and here.
And what does it look like at the landing site? It looks like this, an early image from the lander.
View of Chang'e-3 landing site from it's monitoring camera (China National Space Administration/Associated Press)
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