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China's lunar satellite faces eclipse challenge
2008-08-15
BEIJING (AFP) - China's first lunar satellite, which has been turning around the moon for nearly nine months, will be stripped of its solar energy supply Sunday when the earth eclipses the sun, state media said Friday. In a second challenge for Chang'e 1, a lunar orbiter launched last year, it will run on battery power for over three hours Sunday morning when it will be deprived of solar rays, the official Xinhua news agency said. The satellite successfully ran on battery power for two hours during a full eclipse in February, Xinhua said. "The moon's shadow, also a signal blind area, could cause a power shortage in freezing temperatures," Wang Sichao, research fellow at Purple Mountain Observatory in the eastern city of Nanjing, was quoted by Xinhua as saying. In the first eclipse, scientists changed the orbit of the satellite to shorten the time it was out of direct sunlight, the news agency reported. Chang'e 1 is part of China's three-stage moon mission, which is expected to include a landing on the moon and the launch of a rover vehicle which will return to Earth with soil and stone samples around 2017, according to the report.
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