Talk:Chang'e 4

Will Chang'e 4 ever launch?
According to this report (22 December), "The [Chang'e 3] mission also marks the full completion of the second phase of China's lunar program, which includes orbiting, landing and returning to Earth. After the mission, China's lunar program will enter a new stage of unmanned automatic sampling and return, which will include Chang'e-5 and 6 missions. China plans to launch lunar probe Chang'e-5 in 2017, according to SASTIND."

The 1st ref (16 December) says, "With its Chang’e-3 probe successfully landed on the moon, China has announced details of the next phase of its lunar exploration program — to send an unmanned craft in 2017 that will land and return with samples. [...] The Chang’e-4, built as a backup to Chang’e-3, will be reconfigured to test new equipment for a subsequent Chang’e-5 mission that will bring back lunar samples, Wu Zhijian, a spokesman for the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, said at a news conference on Monday."

The 2nd ref is from 2011, long before Chang'e 3 successfully landed on the Moon. nagualdesign (talk) 02:11, 26 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Update: China official states that Chang'e 4 will be delayed: : The programme’s next step would be to send a Long March-3B rocket to the moon and attempt to return to earth safely without a landing, he said." http://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1511212/chinas-next-moon-mission-doubt-says-senior-space-programme
 * Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 12:21, 5 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the update! What a peculiar wording they use: "send a Long March-3B rocket to the moon and attempt to return to earth safely without a landing". It brings to mind an image of a complete Long March-3B rocket travelling to the Moon, and perhaps one day landing, Button Moon style. I'm guessing that they're actually going to send the Chang'e 4 hardware (including the lander in some form) along with a new ERV, which would put things right on schedule really. Great stuff.   nagual  design   02:17, 6 June 2014 (UTC)


 * According to this article (14 October 2014) Chang'e 4 will be an orbiter next week. So which reports are the basis of undoing my edit ? (No hard feelings, just curious.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cobbaut (talk • contribs) 15:54, 14 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Now will launch before 2020 http://www.space.com/28809-china-rocket-family-moon-plans.html crandles (talk) 00:55, 27 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Is Chang'e 4 still going to be before Chang'e 5 presumably 5 being 2020 or beyond or is Chang'e 5 still expected to be launched in 2017? crandles (talk) 01:15, 27 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Still Circa 2017 as recently as Aug 2014 reports, so I am thinking Chang'e 4 is delayed to after Chang'e 5 but I am reluctant to add this to the article without a reference for it. crandles (talk) 13:34, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
 * The latest update (2016/01/14) on the launch date for Cheng'e 4 is the end of 2018. Since Chang'e 4 is re-purposed to land on the far side of the moon, CNSA will first launch a communication relay satellite to Earth-Moon L2 point in June 2018.
 * http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2016/01141307-updates-on-change-program.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/ Showmebeef (talk) 04:28, 25 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Launched today. 50.111.6.33 (talk) 14:57, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I think you have a very slow internet connection. :-)  Rowan Forest (talk) 15:38, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Update
The relay satellite, Queqiao, was launched May 20 and has reached the L2 halo orbit. The Longjiang 2 microsatellite has sent some beautiful shots of Earth from lunar orbit but, according to Planetary Report, Lonjiang 1 failed to go into orbit. CFLeon (talk) 21:40, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

The picture of its launching is wrong
Chang'e 4 was launched by CZ-3B (four boosters) rather than CZ-3C (two boosters). And on the rocket's fairing the CLEP logo was placed beneath the national flag with the logos of the foreign institutes beside. Wastion Wang (talk) 06:25, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Please, someone, add the first image recorded from the Moon's surface to the article
Here's the image on CNET. I don't know under which license it was issued by the Chinese Space Agency. But even if it's copyrighted, we should undeniably include it under the fair use due to the sheer importance of the photo. Openlydialectic (talk) 12:17, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The first image ever taken from the far side of the moon would definitely fall under fair use given its historical importance. A similar photo taken by the CNSA used on wikipedia |Wikipedia under fair use is that of the asteroid Toutatis. If the image of Toutatis is useable under fair use, than an image of the far side taken by Chang'e 4 certainly is as well.XavierGreen (talk) 14:12, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The folks at Wikipedia Commons really get their panties in a bunch in cases like this. Especially with all the logos. Good luck and I hope you get it. Rowan Forest (talk) 14:17, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Nice picture (although the linked site opened up musical ads so I bailed pretty quick). Seems to make it over the fair use bar per historical importance and relevance to the article. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:31, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

The Chag'e 4 rover
Has mainland China released the name of the rover yet? -- sion8 talk page 19:26, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * So far, the English-language media shows no rename yet. China will likely soon name the rover and lander, but leave the mission name as Chang'e 4. Rowan Forest (talk) 19:33, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The rover has been deployed, and it seems it is called Yutu-2 . Cheers, Rowan Forest (talk) 23:45, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I noticed that the original Yutu (rover) has its own article; at what point will we split them for this mission? Both rovers are basically copies so the specs are nearly identical, and we know its science payload too. Rowan Forest (talk) 00:32, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Needs pronunciation key
I've noticed that none of the Chang'e spacecraft articles mention clearly how to pronounce the name. Even Chang'e herself is ambiguous. Does it rhyme with "Sprang-day"? "Bong-me?" Ideally your casual Wikipedia reader should not need to cross reference a pinyin pronunciation guide to learn how to speak the word. Articles should be always written with the readers in mind. --Animalparty! (talk) 23:47, 3 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I think most Wikipedia articles currently don't give pronounciations for Chinese words. Like, you could make it say Chang'e 4 (Mandarin pronounciation: ), but in fact that's not super helpful, because most people also will not know how to read the IPA... Vilhelm.s (talk) 04:44, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Rover power: RTG or RHU?
I suspect that the reporter at (current reference #36) may have confused RTG (radioisotope thermoelectric generators) with RHU (radioisotope heater unit). For example, the little Opportunity and Spirit rovers each carried an RHU only to keep their systems warm during the night, but usable electric power was generated by solar panels. The Curiosity rover does carry an RTG and it has a significant volume and mass. The twin Yutu rover, Yutu-1 only had solar panels and an RHU. Your thoughts? Rowan Forest (talk) 18:45, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Magpie Bridge
The article should reference the Chinese Legend, The_Cowherd_and_the_Weaver_Girl, the source of the name for the link satellite. Roger J Cooper (talk) 18:40, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It was there before and someone deleted it. I support its reinstatement. Cheers, Rowan Forest (talk) 19:01, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Halo orbit animation
The animation of the halo orbit needs more of an explanation in the caption. It really isn't comprehensible if you don't already know about Lagrange points. Also, it runs awfully fast. I suggest slowing it down.Bill (talk) 21:25, 5 January 2019 (UTC)
 * It shows L2 but not the halo orbit. I think this other diagram explains it better, and how it achieves a direct line of sight. Cheers, Rowan Forest (talk) 22:37, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Travel time
Is there a (noteworthy) reason why it takes 4 weeks to land from launch? Chang'e 3 was a “long” trip too, at 2 weeks. MBG02 (talk) 13:44, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Hello. They orbited the Moon for a while at different altitudes. Being a program of increasingly sophisticated developments for each step, they were likely testing some systems or procedures. Their next phases of this program will be a sample return, and then human flight, so maybe they need to test rendezvous procedures in lunar orbit. Who knows, maybe they even tested that with the Chan'e 5 Service Module currently orbiting the Moon. No references though. Cheers, Rowan Forest (talk) 16:18, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

First soft landing ?
In the intro/lede paragraph that has the phrase "the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon," I think the word "known" should be inserted between "first" and "soft" so that it reads -- "the first known soft landing on the far side of the Moon" (my emphasis).

I suggest this given the Soviet Zond and Luna programs of the 1960s and 1970s along with their secret launches that we know next to nothing about. And don't forget, they were the first to land a probe on Venus (Venera program).

This was the era of the Space Race to the Moon and the Soviets did soft land nearly three years before Apollo 11. And at the time, they only announced to the world about a mission after its success. Given the Soviets' secrecy, it's very possible that they soft landed on the far side but something then went wrong --- as such, no Soviet announcement about such a mission.

Just a thought. 2600:8800:784:8F00:C23F:D5FF:FEC4:D51D (talk) 12:12, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The Soviet Union was secretive but fast to brag after each success. There is no source stating the Soviets ever attempted a landing on the far side, so Wikipedia will not speculate that there is a coverup/conspiracy/secrecy by inserting the word "known" at that sentence. Cheers, Rowan Forest (talk) 16:08, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Realize that even with 21st Century technology, a landing on the farside still requires the support communications from either a lunar orbiter or a halo orbit and no other soviet craft fits that supporting role. Also, only Luna 18 really would even be a possibility for a farside ATTEMPT (Luna 15 was the FIRST attempt at a sample return- not likely to be from the farside).CFLeon (talk) 21:53, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Earth-like Environment
"Environmental systems will keep the container hospitable and Earth-like, except for the low lunar gravity." Well, obviously not JUST except for the gravity. There are a lot of things that go into "Earth-like". They're using 1 or more RHU's to keep things at Earth-like temperature. Which must give off radiation as well as heat. I'm not sure how much, but it might be dwarfed by the cosmic radiation we typically don't worry about here on Earth thanks to the atmosphere and the magnetosphere, which the moon doesn't have. Presumably they do something to regulate the amount of more mundane radiation like light into the capsule. Sunrise to sunrise takes about a month on the moon, doesn't it? It landed around a new moon, so it should have almost full sunlight. On the 12th the sun sets and it'll have darkness until... Jan 29th? And they appear to be hoping atmosphere CO2<->O2 levels are balanced by the ecosystem (which would be hella cool). They've been stuck on board for about a month now, but eggs are dormant through winter, so if kept cold, they shouldn't try to hatch. "The silkworm eggs will generally hatch within a week after they arrive if kept between 78 and 85 degrees, but may take up to 2 weeks (eggs take longer to hatch at cooler temperatures)." You can't really turn off RHU's, but maybe they could move it so they only get warm once landed? If they want to maintain a temperature range, it'll need temperature control. I can't find much about the experiment other than the same blurbs that are regurgitated in all the linked sources. What does wikipedia do when the cited material is obviously off? 4.31.13.17 (talk) 23:31, 8 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Find better sources! :) I had to do that with Vanguard 3 recently.  But posting here is a good first step.  Thank you. --Neopeius (talk) 16:08, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, radiation is a factor. The lander orbited the Moon about 2 weeks after arrival for some unknown reasons, and watered the plants after landing but just before the cold night was to start, so that did not give time to develop a functional ecosystem. Apparently, the battery that would have kept the habitat warm was removed before launch, and the available heat and power were routed elsewhere -to critical systems surely. . Cheers, Rowan Forest (talk) 17:30, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 21:07, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The first panorama from the far side of the moon.jpg