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China
launches 1st moon rover, the 'Jade Rabbit'
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[December 02, 2013]
BEIJING (AP) — China launched its
first rover mission to the moon Monday, sending a robotic craft named
Jade Rabbit to trundle across the lunar landscape, examine its geology
and beam images back to Earth.
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A rocket carrying the rover aboard an unmanned Chang'e 3 spaceship
successfully blasted off early Monday from a launch center in
southwestern China and was scheduled to arrive on the moon in
mid-December, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
"We will strive for our space dream as part of the Chinese dream of
national rejuvenation," Xichang Satellite Launch Center director
Zhang Zhenzhong said.
If the Chang'e 3 successfully soft-lands on the moon, China will
become the third country to do so, after the United States and the
former Soviet Union. A soft landing does not damage the craft and
the equipment it carries. An earlier Chinese craft orbited and
collected data before intentionally crash-landing on the moon.
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"Chang'e" is a mythical Chinese goddess of the moon, and "Yutu" — or
"Jade Rabbit" — is her pet.
The solar-powered rover will survey the moon's geological structures
and set up a telescope to survey the surface as well as observe the
Earth's plasmasphere, a region of dense, cold plasma that surrounds
the planet, Xinhua said.
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China sent its first astronaut into space in 2003, becoming the
third nation after Russia and the United States to achieve manned
space travel independently. China has already said its eventual
goals are to have a space station and put an astronaut on the moon.
The military-backed space program is a source of enormous national
pride and has powered ahead in a series of well-funded, methodically
timed steps. It has already made major breakthroughs in a relatively
short time, although it lags far behind the United States and Russia
in space technology and experience.
[Associated
Press]
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