Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Tuesday, October 19th.  The sun will rise at 8:02.  It’ll be up for 10 hours and 48 minutes, setting at 6:51.   The moon, 3 days before full, will set at 5:42 tomorrow morning.

China launched their second Lunar orbited on October 1st.  It arrived in lunar orbit 4 days later.  China’s Chang’E spacecraft are named after an ancient legend if a young fairy who flew to the moon.  This one is Chang’E-2 which follows after three years Chang’E-1.  It has improved cameras over the first spacecraft.  It is in a elliptical orbit of 62 miles at its farthest and only 9.3 miles at its closest.  The Chang’E series are in preparation for the eventual Chinese landing of humans on the moon.  Next for China is Chang’E-3 a lander and rover, and Chang’E-4 a sample return mission.  [The manned landing on the moon is expected in the 2025 to 2030 range.]*  The Chinese are also setting their sights on Mars and will piggyback a satellite on Russia’s next Mars mission.

*Text in brackets was dropped due to time constraints.  I only have 59 seconds.