WHAT WE DO

JOINRENEWJOIN

  

The Planetary Society Blog

By Emily Lakdawalla




The Chang'e 1 mission is over

Mar. 1, 2009 | 12:26 PST | 20:26 UTC
We need your help.
Please donate to support our blog, website, and podcast.
RSS 2.0 News Feed

According to this item from the Xinhua news agency, the first Chinese lunar orbiter, Chang'e 1, was intentionally de-orbited and crashed into the Moon today, at 08:13 UTC March 1, 2009. They gave its impact location as 1.5 degrees south, 52.36 degrees east, which Phil Stooke says is within Mare Fecunditatis and 120 kilometers west of the landing site of the 1970 Russian sample return mission Luna 16.

Thanks to Geert for the tip.

That leaves three craft still orbiting the Moon: Chandrayaan-1, Kaguya, and one of the two Kaguya mini-satellites, Ouna, the other mini-satellite having crashed on February 12.

Chang'e 1
Farewell, Chang'e 1
Credit: CAST

Post this page to: del.icio.us Yahoo! MyWeb Digg reddit Furl Blinklist Spurl

Comments

Name
E-mail (Will not appear online)
Title
Comment
To prevent automated Bots form spamming, please enter the text you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.



This comment form is powered by GentleSource Comment Script. It can be included in PHP or HTML files and allows visitors to leave comments on the website.


Emily's on Twitter! »

Sign up for email updates!
Email address:
(optional) Your name: