{"id":1600,"date":"2013-12-17T07:05:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-16T23:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/?p=1600"},"modified":"2013-12-17T07:38:43","modified_gmt":"2013-12-16T23:38:43","slug":"chinas-lunar-lander-did-it-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/2013\/12\/17\/chinas-lunar-lander-did-it-crash\/","title":{"rendered":"China&#8217;s Lunar Lander &#8211; did it Crash?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I first saw the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.liveleak.com\/view?i=7d4_1387172326\">video of the Chang&#8217;e 3 lunar landing at LiveLeak<\/a> and have to say I thought it was beautiful: the smooth motion and clear images reminded me of looking out of the window of an aeroplane as it banks while lining up to land at a destination airport. The video is over 6 minutes long at almost 30fps (frames per second &#8211; 29.97fps according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mplayerhq.hu\/design7\/news.html\">mplayer<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\t<video id=\"wp_mep_1\"   width=\"384\" height=\"288\"  controls=\"controls\" preload=\"none\"  >\r\n\t\t<source src=\"http:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Chinese_lunar_rover_takes_6_mins_landing_on_moon_LiveLeak_dot_com_7d4_1387172326_121862939.flv.h264_base.mp4\" type=\"video\/mp4\" \/>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t<object width=\"384\" height=\"288\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" data=\"http:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-content\/plugins\/media-element-html5-video-and-audio-player\/mediaelement\/flashmediaelement.swf\">\r\n\t\t\t<param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-content\/plugins\/media-element-html5-video-and-audio-player\/mediaelement\/flashmediaelement.swf\" \/>\r\n\t\t\t<param name=\"flashvars\" value=\"controls=true&amp;file=http:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Chinese_lunar_rover_takes_6_mins_landing_on_moon_LiveLeak_dot_com_7d4_1387172326_121862939.flv.h264_base.mp4\" \/>\t\t\t\r\n\t\t<\/object>\t\t\r\n\t<\/video>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\njQuery(document).ready(function($) {\r\n\t$('#wp_mep_1').mediaelementplayer({\r\n\t\tm:1\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t,features: ['playpause','current','progress','duration','volume','tracks','fullscreen']\r\n\t\t\r\n\t});\r\n});\r\n<\/script>\r\n<\/p>\n<p>The next video I saw was in an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/science\/space\/10519813\/Footage-released-of-China-Jade-Rabbit-moon-landing.html\">article at the Telegraph under the subtitle &#8220;Chinese state television releases video of the Chang&#8217;e-3 space probe crash landing on the moon&#8221;<\/a>! This second video later made its appearance at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.liveleak.com\/view?i=147_1387217123\">Liveleak (&#8220;Deployment of China&#8217;s Rover on the Lunar Surface&#8221;)<\/a>, again at 29.97 fps (perhaps that&#8217;s LiveLeak&#8217;s preferred transcoding rate?). The &#8216;crash landing&#8217; in the Telegraph title is repeated in the article text:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The footage shows the surface of the moon getting closer and closer to the probe before it crashes into the dust.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>an odd thing to repeat in an article reporting a successful &#8220;soft landing&#8221;!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\t<video id=\"wp_mep_2\"   width=\"428\" height=\"240\"  controls=\"controls\" preload=\"none\"  >\r\n\t\t<source src=\"http:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Deployment_of_China_s_Rover_on_the_Lunar_surface_LiveLeak_dot_com_147_1387217123_RAW_VIDEO_China_s_Moon_Landing_And_Rover_De.mp4\" type=\"video\/mp4\" \/>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t<object width=\"428\" height=\"240\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" data=\"http:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-content\/plugins\/media-element-html5-video-and-audio-player\/mediaelement\/flashmediaelement.swf\">\r\n\t\t\t<param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-content\/plugins\/media-element-html5-video-and-audio-player\/mediaelement\/flashmediaelement.swf\" \/>\r\n\t\t\t<param name=\"flashvars\" value=\"controls=true&amp;file=http:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Deployment_of_China_s_Rover_on_the_Lunar_surface_LiveLeak_dot_com_147_1387217123_RAW_VIDEO_China_s_Moon_Landing_And_Rover_De.mp4\" \/>\t\t\t\r\n\t\t<\/object>\t\t\r\n\t<\/video>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\njQuery(document).ready(function($) {\r\n\t$('#wp_mep_2').mediaelementplayer({\r\n\t\tm:1\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t,features: ['playpause','current','progress','duration','volume','tracks','fullscreen']\r\n\t\t\r\n\t});\r\n});\r\n<\/script>\r\n<\/p>\n<p>The first video&#8217;s 6+ minutes does make the landing look almost serene, but I can&#8217;t imagine a lander would have &#8216;hung around&#8217; much &#8211; the Chinese Space Agency surely wouldn&#8217;t have launched much more fuel into space than absolutely necessary to reach the Moon&#8217;s surface? The faster video seems to start at about the same point as 03:47 in the slower video. Touchdown is at 00:22 in the faster video, 06:07 in the slower video, so 22 seconds (fast) versus 140 seconds (slow).<\/p>\n<p>So was it a gentle glide or a terrifying crash? I can&#8217;t find a &#8216;reference&#8217; version on the WWW, perhaps because it&#8217;s published in Chinese. If anybody knows how fast the landing was and which one (if either) of the videos portrays the landing correctly, I&#8217;d love to know. I&#8217;d also like to hear some audio from the Moon. I see a lot of people saying &#8220;there&#8217;s no sound in space&#8221;, but I bet there&#8217;s some terrific vibrations from the lander&#8217;s thrusters and some great crunching \/ whining going on in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Moon_rabbit\">Yutu \/ Jade Rabbit<\/a> (the rover)!<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">[More]<\/span><\/strong> A Channel 4 article says<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>fall from 15 kilometres above the moon&#8217;s surface to 2.9 metres above it at a speed of 1.7 kilometres per second<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>which makes 20 seconds sound about right &#8211; if it was a vertical drop (unlikely?) or &#8216;speed&#8217; has been used in place of &#8216;descent&#8217;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I first saw the video of the Chang&#8217;e 3 lunar landing at LiveLeak and have to say I thought it was beautiful: the smooth motion and clear images reminded me of looking out of the window of an aeroplane as it banks while lining up to land at a destination airport. The video is over [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,40,51,64],"tags":[110,56],"class_list":["post-1600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaktime","category-life","category-philosophy","category-useful","tag-hardware","tag-questions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1600"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1615,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1600\/revisions\/1615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}