Chinese probe to reach asteroid Toutatis

This is Chang'e-2, China's first ever interplanetary probe.

Details here:

www.planetary.org...

Problem is -- the Chinese probe hasn't been mentioned in their official press for months.

Is it even still working?

Days to go before the encounter.

Seems it took a trip to the L2 point a year or so ago. 4179 Toutatis will be passing close by so it wouldn't take a lot of delta V to make a pass. Tricky though.

Originally posted by JimOberg
Problem is -- the Chinese probe hasn't been mentioned in their official press for months.

You read official Chinese press? I found one article posted today: www.21cbh.com...

Plenty of English news articles too, just use Google.

Looking forward to what the probe will see. I'm quite impressed with the radar images, they surpass anything we could ever see in a telescope.

Originally posted by wildespace

Originally posted by JimOberg
Problem is -- the Chinese probe hasn't been mentioned in their official press for months.

You read official Chinese press? I found one article posted today: www.21cbh.com...

Plenty of English news articles too, just use Google.

Looking forward to what the probe will see. I'm quite impressed with the radar images, they surpass anything we could ever see in a telescope.

Thanks for the links, I couldn't open the Chinese one -- what does it say?

The google search you linked seems to report all about the asteroid, but i saw no mention of the Chinese probe.

That's what i'm asking about.

Closer and closer -- and still not a peep out of Beijing.....

Originally posted by Phage
Seems it took a trip to the L2 point a year or so ago. 4179 Toutatis will be passing close by so it wouldn't take a lot of delta V to make a pass. Tricky though.

Huh?

Originally posted by JimOberg
Thanks for the links, I couldn't open the Chinese one -- what does it say?

I don't know, I can't read Chinese. I was under the impression you can. Google search brings up several Chinese articles about Toutatis published recently, perhaps the space probe is mentioned in them, perhaps not.

Today's article mentions the probe. Apparently, it is being tracked by a NASA scientist. www.examiner.com...

P.S. on the topic of Chang'e spacecraft, the next one will be a lunar rover! europe.chinadaily.com.cn...

Apparently, the Chang2 probe passed within 2miles of

planet buster Toutatis , which they kept under wraps until the

probe snapped the pictures.

MSNBC link for Toutatis story (drudge)

Nice find OP ... It will be interesting to see its finds also the current X37b observations must be amazing....

reply to post by mungodave


Think of L2 as good place to park your spacecraft. Search Lagrange point if you really want to know

If you can read Chinese, here are the newspages in Chinese about the encounter with Toutatis. Some of the diagrams are perfectly understandable, even though the text isn't.

Here is the english version

Another pic of Toutatis:

reply to post by Hellhound604


Looks like a ginger root to me.

2nd

Thought you guys might like this, very nice to see in action.
Astroid 4179

Originally posted by Mosthated718bx
Thought you guys might like this, very nice to see in action.
Astroid 4179

Yes, I still wanted to link to that video, but it slipped my mind. Thank you for doing it. There we can see the asteroid from another angle.

reply to post by Hellhound604


No problem pretty cool stuff!