Research on Lunar Radio Measurement on Chang’e-3

Abstract

After the successful launch on December 2, 2013, Chang’e-3 performed soft landing on lunar surface on December 14, which is designed to stand in place for more than 1 year, and it can transmit X-band signals when the transponder is switched on. With the signals, ranging, Doppler, carrier phase, VLBI delay and delay rate can be acquired from ground TT&C antennas and VLBI antennas. These techniques can be called Lunar Radio Measurement (LRM) collectively. By LRM technique, more rich observations can be acquired nearly at the same time, so it could be more effective in contributing to space geodesy than LLR（lunar Laser Ranging）which only provides ranging observation. To analyze the LRM technique, MEKAS (Moon Earth Kinematical Analysis Software) is developed, which can simulate all kinds of observations mentioned above, carry out covariance analysis and determine the parameters including CE-3 position on the lunar surface, ground site coordinates UT1, EOP and love number. Simulation results show that LRM technique has wide prospects in earth and lunar science.

Keywords

Chang’e-3 / Yutu Rover / X-band transponder / lunar radio measurement