Screen shows the photo of the Yutu moon rover taken by the camera on the Chang'e-3 moon lander during the mutual-photograph process, at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 15, 2013. The moon rover and the moon lander took photos of each other Sunday night, marking the complete success of the Chang'e-3 lunar probe mission.
A Chinese lunar probe soft landed on the moon at 9:11 pm on Saturday, making China the first nation to put a probe on the moon in nearly four decades. As an estimated hundreds of millions watched China Central Television's live broadcast, the 3,780-kilogram probe Chang'e-3 began at 9 pm to descend on a parabolic trajectory from 15 kilometers above the moon's surface. Before touching down, the probe - which incorporated a robotic lander and a rover, the Yutu, or Jade Rabbit - went through six stages of deceleration, slowing from 1,700 meters per second.
China's lunar probe Chang'e-3, with the country's first moon rover onboard, successfully landed on the moon on Saturday night, marking the first time that China has sent a spacecraft to soft land on the surface of an extraterrestrial body. The lunar probe began to carry out soft-landing on the moon at about 21:00 p.m., Saturday and touched down in Sinus Iridum, or the Bay of Rainbows, about 12 minutes later, according to Beijing Aerospace Control Center.
China's Chang'e 3 lunar mission got off to a successful start on December 2 when a rocket carrying a moon lander and rover blasted off from Xichang, in the southwestern province of Sichuan. Four days later the lander and rover started orbiting the moon, and a "soft landing" – one that allows equipment to touch down unharmed– is expected in mid-December.
China's lunar probe Chang'e-3 entered an orbit closer to the moon on Tuesday night. Following an order from the Beijing Aerospace Control Center, the probe descended from the 100 km-high lunar circular orbit to an elliptical orbit with its nearest point about 15 km away from the moon's surface, the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense said in a statement.
Scientists and policymakers from China and 18 other countries met in Kathmandu, Nepal last week to discuss improving the lives of poor people in the Hindu Kush Himalayas (HKH) mountain region of southern Asia. Four representatives of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) joined with other Chinese researchers at the International Conference on Addressing Poverty and Vulnerability, which was held from Dec. 1-4.
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