[FPSPACE] China Announces Moon Probe Project in 'Launching Phase'

[E.P. Grondine]

Hi -

Going back to my notes, the planned orbit is lunar polar at 100 kilometers, 
which assures coverage of every inch of the Moon.  The SV (FP) stage 
capabilities were known, so I suppose someone can work out the launch window 
from there. (When does the April, 2007 configuration occur again?)

The original launch date was supposed to be April, 2007, so there has been 
some slippage, and if anything is off nominal at launch, then naturally 
there will be a scrub.  One item of interest is the addition to the original 
CE1 configuration of a radar to probe lunar soil depth - this probably comes 
from China's new synthetic aperture recon sats, and the redesign may account 
for some of the CE1 slippage.

CE1 is going to greatly increase our knowledge of the Moon. I wish China's 
team the best success. When this data is processed into a useful data set, 
its going to be magnificent, if they can just pull this one off.

Anybody got the public sat photos of China's ground stations and their 
antennas?

Two more items of interest from my quick review: it was announced that SZ9 
would be manned, which leaves SZ8 as the experimental laboratory main body 
and SZ10 as the experimental laboratory's solar electric array.  The plan 
appears to be to launch the main body, dock a SZ with it, then use the SZ 
engines  to dock with the power supply.

A first mockup of China's station for launch with CZ5 was shown at the 
aerospace show. The model  had a SZ type solar array, but I'm almost certain 
that this is not what will finally be used.

E.P. Grondine
Man and Impact in the Americas (a really great book)

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