TO THE MOON, MARS, AND BEYOND

Many folks would like to see us back on the Moon and developing its resources.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Sinus Iridum (the Bay of Rainbows)

With the Chang'e 3 mission duo landing on the Moon at the Bay of Rainbows, maybe a few links about Sinus Iridum are in order..
Let's start with Astro Bob's blog where he has the  video clips of the landing sequence to Sinus Iridum.
- LRK -

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Astro Bob - Celestial happenings you can see from your own backyard - 
Touchdown! China’s Chang’e 3 lands on the moon

You can settle back with your cup of morning coffee knowing that the Chinese moon lander successfully touched down on the lunar surface this morning at 7:11 a.m. (CST). The lander’s descent camera recorded a safe touchdown in the Bay of Rainbows, a 160-mile-wide (257 km) lava flooded relic crater in the moon’s northern hemisphere.

Chang’e 3′s onboard optical and microwave sensors guided the spacecraft during its final few hundred feet to the surface. At about 15 feet (4.5 m), the lander’s thrusters switched off and Chang’e 3 free fell the rest of the way to avoid kicking up too much moon dust.

- See more at: http://astrobob.areavoices.com/2013/12/14/touchdown-chinas-change-3-lands-on-the-moon/#sthash.L2KnlS62.dpuf
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Sky at Night as a nice article about Sinus Iridum.
Do take a look.
- LRK -

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Moonwatch – Sinus Iridum
Sinus Iridum
Image Credit: 
 Pete Lawrence

If you observe Sinus Iridum at precisely the right time, you'll see the famous Jewelled Handle


Sinus Iridum, or the Bay of Rainbows, is one of the loveliest features of the Moon: the Bay of Rainbows. It leads off the vast Mare Imbrium and was shown and named by the famous lunar observer Giovanni Riccioli in his map drawn in 1651. In those days, of course, it was generally believed that the dark areas really were seas, and that the Moon could well be a world suited to life.
Sinus Iridum is called a bay, but it is really a crater whose seaward wall has been virtually destroyed; only a few very low, disconnected fragments can be traced. Elsewhere the mountainous ‘wall’ is continuous and fairly high, though the outermost edge is disturbed for a short distance by the prominent crater Bianchini. The continuous section is bounded by two capes, Promontorium Heraclides and Promontorium Laplace.
The floor of Iridum slopes downward from the Mare Imbrium, so that at the far side it is about 200ft (61 metres) lower than the level of the Mare. There is nothing quite like this anywhere else on the Moon, but the sequence of events seems to be fairly straightforward. The Mare itself was formed during the lunar epoch named after it – the Imbrium – which ended over three thousand million years ago, so that it post-dates the Great Bombardment. The Iridum impact followed before the great lava-floods, which accounts for the inundation of the seaward wall.
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And what Wikipedia has to say.
- LRK -

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Sinus Iridum (Latin for "Bay of Rainbows") is a plain of basaltic lava that forms a northwestern extension to the Mare Imbrium. It is surrounded from the northeast to the southwest by the Montes Jura range. The protruding part of the range at the southwest end is namedPromontorium Heraclides, while that at the northeast end is called Promontorium Laplace. This bay and the surrounding mountains is considered one of the most beautiful features on the Moon, and is a favorite among lunar observers.
Sinus Iridum is formed from the remains of a large impact crater, which was subsequently flooded with basaltic lava, inundating the "sea" wall. It does not, itself, contain any notable impact craters, but does include the satellite crater Heraclides E in the south, Laplace A along the eastern edge, and Bianchini G in the north. The surface is level, but is marked by a number of wrinkle ridges.
The selenographic coordinates of this bay are 44.1° N, 31.5° W, and the diameter is 236 km.[1] The feature was given the latin name for the Bay of Rainbows by Giovanni Riccioli.

Chinese Moon Rover Mission[edit]

On December 14, 2013 the Chinese government successfully executed a soft landing of their rover on Sinus Iridum. The rover, named after the Chinese folklore of the Jade Rabbit (Simp. Chinese: 玉兔), is the first man made object to land on the moon in the 21st Century.
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The Planetary Society is following Chang'e 3 mission events as they unfold.
- LRK -

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Chang'e 3 has successfully landed on the Moon!
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla
2013/12/14 08:28 CST

Topics: pics of spacecraft in space, mission status, spacecraft,the Moon, Chang'E program

The official landing time for Chang'e 3 was 13:11:18 UT -- a full half-hour earlier than the time announced yesterday, which meant that I missed the action. Thank goodness for denizens of the Internet making screen caps of the images that the lander returned during its descent to the moon! There was not live video but there were video frames transmitted. According to a member of the mission team interviewed after the landing onChinese state television (CCTV), they expected 10 frames to be transmitted but actually received 59. Here is an animation of a few of them:
http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/space-images/earth/change-3-lands-on-the-moon.html
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Several links to Lunar Networks blog links.
- LRK -

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LUNAR NETWORKS

Chang'e-3 successfully lands on the Moon
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Remember Japan's orbiter mission, Kaguya, and its high definition videos?
Watch it again at Luna C/I: Moon Colonization and Integration blog by Nick Azer.
- LRK -

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Orbiting Atlas #1!: Sinus Iridum (The Bay of Rainbows) December 15, 2009
Posted by Nick Azer

Welcome to my brand new weekly feature—Orbiting Atlas! Each Monday, I’ll break out my lunar globe and trek to a different selenographic point of interest, giving you a tour of each location’s features, history, and potential :)

The first entry gets the honor for being in the news recently…so without further ado:

Sinus Iridum—The Bay of Rainbows

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The circular “Bay”—given its name by Italian astronomer Giovanni Riccioli–is ringed by the Montes Jura, with the cape-like Promontorium Laplace jutting out along the northeast. The Bay has a diameter of ~149 miles, and lays at the northwest corner of the large, western plain Mare Imbrium, about 1,225 miles northwest of the Apollo 11 landing site and 620 miles northwest of the Apollo 15 site.
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Mare Imbrium’s lava plains are nearly flat, extending into Sinus Iridum (once a crater, with the southeast wall having been eliminated in an Imbrium event). These plains are prime territory for helium-3, and that stretch where there was once the southeastern wall may make for a revealing geological study.

It’s figured there’s a large amount of helium-3 on the Moon, but the distribution is unknown—so by scouting out a different mare, China could dig up valuable information on a region not already targeted for ‘gold rush’. Perhaps we’ll see a private company follow the Chinese lead, and scope it out for themselves…

Sinus Imbrium was a location filmed in 2007 by Japan’s orbiter, Kaguya, and it’s HDTV camera. Check out the amazing video below (and also be sure to explore the Bay in Google Earth 5.0′s spiffy Moon view!):
Uploaded on Mar 23, 2009
KAGUYA (SELENE) taking "Mare Imbrium and Sinus Iridum" by HDTV. Aspect ratio 16:9 and HD quality in English narration. (C)JAXA/NHK
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Hopefully we will get to see some tracks of the Chang'e 3 mission like we have from the Apollo 15 mission.
- LRK -

I am waiting to see if our local cable news has any sound bytes from this historical event.

Thanks for looking up with me.  
- LRK -
Chang'e 3 (Chinese: 嫦娥三号; pinyin: Cháng'é Sānhào) is a lunar exploration mission operated by the China National Space Administration, incorporating a robotic lander and a rover. Chang'e 3 was launched on the morning of 2 December 2013 local time (17:30 1 December UTC), which is part of the second phase of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program.[5][9][10] It will be China's first lunar rover.
The spacecraft is named after Chang'e, the goddess of the Moon in Chinese mythology, and is a follow-up to the Chang'e 1 andChang'e 2 lunar orbiters. The lunar rover is called Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, a name selected in an online poll that comes from a Chinese myth about a white rabbit that lives on the Moon as a companion of the moon goddess Chang'e.[11] It achieved lunar orbit on 6 December 2013 (Beijing time).[12]

This article or section documents a current or recent spaceflight. Details may change as the mission progresses
Topographic data from the Chang'e 1 and 2 orbiters were used to select a landing site for Chang'e 3. The lander descended on Sinus Iridum(Latin for "Bay of Rainbows"), located at 44.1°N 31.5°W[7] on 14 December 2013.[38] Sinus Iridum is a plain formed in a 249 km diameter impact crater, which was subsequently flooded with basaltic lava; it is also a northwestern extension of Mare Imbrium.[39]
The landing site is Sinus Iridum, a lava-filled crater 249 km in diameter. Arrow shows location of Soviet Lunokhod 1 rover
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK -

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