Take a virtual tour of Chinese lunar landing site

BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW

Posted: February 14, 2014


China's robotic moon landing mission, which arrived there two months ago, has produced the digital era's first high-resolution images from the lunar surface.

But unlike NASA's practice with its Mars rovers, Chinese officials have not produced any mosaics or panoramas from images taken by the Chang'e 3 lander or rover.

That task fell to amateurs.

Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo, who have collaborated to work on images from NASA's Mars missions, assembled the otherworldly productions seen below from single snapshots released by the Chinese team.

The Chang'e 3 mission's stationary lander and mobile Yutu rover both have cameras, and the vehicles spent the first few days after landing taking pictures of each other. The rover has now logged about 100 meters, more than 300 feet, across the moon's charcoal-colored soils.

The mission touched down Dec. 14 in Mare Imbrium, a volcanic basin that appears as one of the moon's dark regions when seen from Earth.

Chang'e 3 achieved the first soft landing on the moon since 1976, when the Soviet Union's Luna 24 mission collected samples and returned them to Earth.

Read our latest story on the Chang'e 3 mission.

This 360-degree panorama was stitched from six individual pictures taken by the lander's color camera in December 2013 and released through the Chinese language Chinanews.com outlet. The initial panorama was enhanced to improve contrast, lighting and uniformity, revealing more details. See a larger version. Credit: CNSA/Chinanews.com/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

This 360-degree panorama includes superimposed images of the Yutu rover at different positions along its trek. The size and color balance of the rover was adjusted to give the vehicle a more realistic appearance. "Altogether, it shows Yutu at three different positions around the landing site and gives a real sense of how she is maneuvering around," Kremer says. See a larger version.
Credit: CNSA/Chinanews.com/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

This cropped view of the panorama shows the Yutu rover at two positions near the Chang'e 3 lander in the early days of the mission in December 2013. See a larger version.
Credit: CNSA/Chinanews.com/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

This cropped view of the panorama shows the Yutu rover driving around the Chang'e 3 lander. See a larger version. Credit: CNSA/Chinanews.com/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

This cropped view of the panorama shows the Yutu rover driving away from the Chang'e 3 lander. See a larger version. Credit: CNSA/Chinanews.com/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

This image shows terrain matched in an image from the Chang'e 3 lander and an image from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. See a larger version.
Credit: CNSA/NASA/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo/Mark Robinson
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