Early in the morning of Dec. 2, 2013, the Long March-3B carrier rocket carried China’s Chang’e 3 lunar probe blasts off at Xichang Satellite Launch Center successfully. Carrying China’s first moon rover (Yutu), it will be the first time for China to send a spacecraft for a soft landing on the moon. It will realize Chinese dreams of reaching the moon.

Chang’e 3 is a key part of the second phase of China’s lunar program. Chang’e 3, comprising a lander and a moon rover, will make the first soft-land on the moon, carry out automatic survey, get the internal substance of the moon and conduct analysis, which brings the surface probe of the first phase to the deep inner probe. It will break through key technologies including soft landing, surface survey, survival on the moon surface, deep space communication, remote control and carrying rocket directly into the earth-moon transfer orbit.

In the missions of lunar program Chang’e 1 and Chang’e 2, XIOPM of CAS had shot the world’s most complete and clearest lunar map and made crucial contributions. While in this mission of Chang’e 3, it has developed two payloads and multiple devices and undertook two scientific tasks and two program tasks.

XIOPM has developed the panoramic camera which was a payload of the moon rover and undertook two program tasks and one scientific task. The two program tasks were separately cross-filming of lander and moon rover and surface survey by moon rover; the scientific task was obtaining 3D optical images of surveying areas for analysis and integration research of the area’s geomorphology, impact craters and geological structure. It has developed the UV lunar-based optical telescope (cooperating with NAOC) which was a payload of lander with the scientific task of carrying out lunar-based optical astro-observation, navigation of moon rover and optical system of obstacle-avoiding camera which instructed the moon rover’s safety travel during its survey process, optical system of star sensor which assisted satellite and lander with attitude determination measurement, and rocket-borne camera device which did real-time monitoring of carrier rocket launching and its flight and realized a live-broadcast for the first time of the launch of Chang’e 3 mission.

Thanks to the above payloads and devices developed by XIOPM, millions of Chinese people witnessed many historic moments like the process of launch of Chang’e, the splendors on the moon surface and looking stars from the moon.

Rocket-borne Camera Device-Giving a Live-Broadcast of Launching of Chang’e

In Chang’e 3 mission, the rocket-borne camera device was firstly used to carry out real-time monitoring of launch of carrier rocket and its flight. With rocket-borne camera device, people will be able to realize close-observation of the flight of rocket and cluster satellites. Together with 3 camera devices developed by XIOPM, Long March-3B carrier rocket shot rocket assisted separation, stage separation, fairing separation, satellite-rocket separation and the working condition of the equipments in the cabin. The lighting device provided target illuminating for the camera devices. The model of the camera device had successfully finished multiple launches and flight missions of Long March-3B carrier rocket and obtained precious image data.

Rocket-borne camera device