Highlights We conduct a ground tracking experiment with China’s first lunar rover. Our method provides highly accurate, real-time, and continuous tracking. A 1-m level accuracy traverse of the rover has been recovered. Detailed movements have been detected with a sensitivity of several centimeters.
Abstract The Chang’E-3 unmanned lunar exploration mission forms an important stage in China’s Lunar Exploration Program. China’s first lunar rover “Yutu” is a sub-probe of the Chang’E-3 mission. Its main science objectives cover the investigations of the lunar soil and crust structure, explorations of mineral resources, and analyses of matter compositions. Some of these tasks require accurate real-time and continuous position tracking of the rover. To achieve these goals with the scale-limited Chinese observation network, this study proposed a ground-based real-time very long baseline interferometry phase referencing tracking method. We choose the Chang’E-3 lander as the phase reference source, and the accurate location of the rover is updated every 10s using its radio-image sequences with the help of a priori information. The detailed movements of the Yutu rover have been captured with a sensitivity of several centimeters, and its traverse across the lunar surface during the first few days after its separation from the Chang’E-3 lander has been recovered. Comparisons and analysis show that the position tracking accuracy reaches a 1-m level.
Ground-based real-time tracking and traverse recovery of China’s first lunar rover
Advances in Space Research ; 57 , 3 ; 880-888
2015-11-18
9 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
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