TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
probably the heat and reflection of the sunlight hitting the surface allowed Yutu to get a slow charge.
China's Space Program News Thread
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solarz
Brigadier
No, Yutu was shutting down for lunar night, which means no sun light at all. The concern was that the solar panel was supposed to act as insulation for the rover's innards, and when it couldn't close properly, there was concern that the internal mechanism would not survive the extremely cold temperature of the lunar night.
The confusion is Yutu did not respond to commands from earth at the expected time after the end of lunar night, but communicated with earth a day or so later. An explanation for this could be it took longer to reach operating power levels after end of lunar night than expected.
solarz
Brigadier
Yes, I agree. I think that is likely due to the fact that the batteries were under decreased insulation and thus took longer to either recharge or to warm up.
Engineer
Major
Yes, there are other commercial satellite constellations, but none of these is GNSS constellation. The only functioning GNSS constellations are GPS, GLOSNASS, and Beidou/Compass. They all provide military service as their primary purpose. Also, while military satellites can provide service to civilians, civilian satellites are not equipped to provide true military service. So, people should not think of civilian satellites as backups.
Yes and no. Yes because different services have different orbit requirements. No because constellations that provide the same type of services will be forced into similar orbits due to operational requirements. Destroying enough satellites at that altitude will ensure destruction of all GNSS constellations.
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JayBird
Junior Member
Still have the mechanical malfunction to contend with. Hope that will be done away with soon enough.
Just out of curiosity, how much of Yutu's original tasks are complete? I am aware that the soil probe and X-ray spectrometers were deployed following the first Lunar Night. What else is there to do?
Just out of curiosity, how much of Yutu's original tasks are complete? I am aware that the soil probe and X-ray spectrometers were deployed following the first Lunar Night. What else is there to do?
Soil probe and x-Ray spectrometer do not offer much promise of breaking new ground and making major new discovery in terms of scientific understanding of lunar surface. Those tools have all been used on the moon before.
By far the most scientifically promising task Yutu can perform is to use its ground penetrating radar to scan beneath lunar surface. This has never been done before and would break new ground by allowing lunar soil to be mapped down to bedrock for the first time. Amongst the things such scans will reveal is a detailed map of the overlapping layers of ejecta from all major impacts in that part of the moon in the last 3 billion years, allowing greatly improved history of the moon to be compiled. It may even reveal just how deep the basaltic volcanic lava flows under the lunar Maria goes before one reaches moon's original crustal rock onto which it flowed.
The ground penetrating radar scan will not be completed so long as Yutu can keep using its radar. As Yutu moves around new scans will add to the understanding of structure of upper layers of the moon.
If Yutu lasts a long time and manage travel several miles, it may even accumulate enough scans to construct 3D topographic maps of bureid lava flow surface, and maybe even buried crustal bedrock below.
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broadsword
Brigadier
In addition, there's a drill that can go 20 metes deep according to a report, if it was not a typo. To have such a device in such a small package is amazing, unless the drill bit is flexible and coiled up.
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