Chang'e-3, China's first planned soft moon landing, finished the first orbital trimming at 3:50 p.m. in its trajectory along the earth-moon transfer orbit, the Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC) said. Chang'e-3 mission with moon rover "Yutu" (Jade Rabbit) was successfully launched early on Monday morning from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. It will travel for around 112 hours along the earth-moon transfer orbit, while scientists adjust its orbit depending on the circumstances.
The Long March-3B carrier rocket carrying China's Chang'e-3 lunar probe blasts off from the launch pad at Xichang Satellite Launch Center, southwest China's Sichuan Province, Dec. 2, 2013. It will be the first time for China to send a spacecraft to soft land on the surface of an extraterrestrial body, where it will conduct surveys on the moon.
Observations of a black hole powering an energetic X-ray source in a galaxy some 22 million light-years away could change our thinking about how some black holes consume matter. The findings indicate that this particular black hole, thought to be the engine behind the X-ray source's high-energy light output, is unexpectedly lightweight, and, despite the generous amount of dust and gas being fed to it by a massive stellar companion, it swallows this material in a surprisingly orderly fashion.
From October, 11th to November, 8th, eight scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have successfully finished the assignments named "China's salt lake resource dynamics investigation". Targeting at China’s salt lakes larger than one square kilometers, the assignment, through outdoor investigation, spot observation and remote monitoring, maps the number, area and distribution of salt lakes and assesses the salt lake reserves, resource density, resource matching, salt lake-related industrial development, miscellaneous resource self-supply, mineral deposit, transport condition, resource consumption, etc.
Global saline-alkali soils are estimated to absorb 1.26 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, which may answer the mystery of the "missing carbon sink," Chinese scientists revealed Wednesday. Scientists usually estimate how much carbon dioxide should be in the atmosphere by calculating how much fossil fuel is burned. But some 1.9 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide is unaccounted for each year.
China is scheduled to launch its Chang'e-3 lunar probe to the moon in early December, the first time a Chinese spacecraft will soft-land on the surface of an extraterrestrial body, an official said on Tuesday. The lunar probe will land on the moon in mid December if everything goes to plan, said Wu Zhijian, spokesman with the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND).
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