News / Brèves Space / Espace Back to previous selection / Retour à la sélection précédente The World’s Lunar Scientists are Working With Chang’e-3 21 December 2013 (LPAC)—Because Chinese space officials immediately released to the public the photographs that the Chang’e-3 lunar lander took on its way down to the surface two days ago, lunar experts around the world were able to use high-resolution imagery taken previously by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Japan’s Selene orbiter to determine the approximate area where the lander settled. Within hours of the landing, Chinese scientists released the exact latitude and longitude of the landing site, allowing the world scientific community to enhance the Chinese mission, by locating the area on high-resolution orbital images, giving broader geographic context to the spacecraft now on the surface. Imagery from the descent, and the photographs the lander took of the rover, and vice versa, also show some of the geographic features where the Yutu rover will be working. The lander sits in the Sea of Rains, not the planned Bay of Rainbows, (which is the risk you take when you let the spacecraft pick its own landing site!). The nearest crater is Laplace E. If the rover travels there, it will be able to examine layers of older lunar soil, that burst up to the surface when an asteroid or comet hit the Moon. According to lunar scientists, this is actually a potentially more geologically interesting region of the Moon than the previously planned site. The older areas of the Moon are the bright highlands that go back to the time of the formation of the crust, 4.5 billion years ago, and were intensely cratered early in lunar history. Younger areas of the Moon are the dark, smooth regions, that are made up of lava flows, termed maria (seas). These regions were the result of volcanic eruptions, perhaps 3.9 billion years ago. Lunar scientist, Paul Spudis, describes the terrain of the Sea of Rains as "some of the most magnificent lava flows fronts seen on the Moon." They are visible from telescopes on Earth. Chang’e-3’s landing site has an overlapping sequence of lava flows. The Yutu rover, Spudis points out, with its scientific instruments, will be able to examine the chemical composition of the lava flows that are on the surface now, and back in time. As the data is released, it be combined with orbital data, and the exploration of the Moon by the Apollo astronauts. [mgf]