Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Chang’e 3's landing cushion technology employs superplastic materials.

When Apollo 11 landed on the Moon there was a need to provide a way to cushion the landing and a crushable aluminum-honeycomb cartridge was used.

Now I see the term 'superplastic' used in relation to the cushion technology for Chang'e 3 lander. 

Wasn't familiar with the term and still a bit confused as the immediate information seems to be about being able to form materials.  

Superplastic, sounds so simple, just maybe some stretchy thing, but what really?  

Stretch, crush, either way, a lot of testing.  Landing your egg on the Moon without breaking the shell. What would you design?
- LRK -

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...
Landing System
In its ambitious landing sequence, the Chang’e 3 lander is dropped from an altitude of 4 meters which required a cushioning landing system on the lander to create a fairly soft landing. The system also has to support the Rover release that is performed after landing. A “cantilever-type” design has been selected for Chang’e 3.

The landing system utilizes four primary landing legs that are equipped with footpads to avoid sinking into the surface. The Chinese used previous lander designs and knowledge on the properties of the lunar dust to develop a landing system that minimizes mass while maximizing stability.

The primary landing struts facilitate bumpers with interior buffer elements to provide shock-absorbing capabilities. The legs are installed at a 30° angle to the lander structure. Multi-functional and single-functional secondary struts are attached to the landing legs to provide additional attach points to the lander body. 
Two secondary struts are attached to each of the landing legs. Those also provide flexibility and shock-absorbing capabilities. Chang’e 3's landing cushion technology employs superplastic materials.  [emphases mine - LRK -]
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Porous and Cellular Materials for Structural Applications - 318 pages PDF - 
You may not be up to reading 318 pages but a look at the table of contents might be informative.
- LRK -

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  1. [PDF]

    Porous and Cellular Materials for Structural Applications - Defense ... 

    by DS Schwartz - 1998 - Cited by 43 - Related articles
    Superplastic Foaming of Titanium and Ti-6AI-4V 231 ..... Volume 532—Silicon Front-End Technology—Materials Processing and Modelling, N.E.B. ..... the collapse stress, oc*, is important in the design of cushions for shock or impact ...... employed to analyze the effect of indenting geometry on the Brinell hardness of sintered  ...
    ..
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Still not seeing what was done.
- LRK -

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Superplasticity
In materials science, superplasticity is a state in which solid crystalline material is deformed well beyond its usual breaking point, usually over about 200% during tensile deformation. Such a state is usually achieved at high homologous temperature, typically half the absolute melting point. Examples of superplastic materials are some fine-grained metals and ceramics. Other non-crystalline materials (amorphous) such as silica glass ("molten glass") and polymers also deform similarly, but are not called superplastic, because they are not crystalline; rather, their deformation is often described as Newtonian flow. Superplastically deformed material gets thinner in a very uniform manner, rather than forming a "neck" (a local narrowing) that leads to fracture.[1] Also, the formation of microvoids, which is another cause of early fracture, is inhibited.[citation needed]
In metals and ceramics, requirements for it being superplastic include a fine grain size (less than approximately 20 micrometres) and a fine dispersion of thermally stable particles, which act to pin the grain boundaries and maintain the fine grain structure at the high temperatures and Existence of Two Phases required for superplastic deformation. Those materials that meet these parameters must still have a strain rate sensitivity (a measurement of the way the stress on a material reacts to changes in strain rate) of >0.3 to be considered superplastic.
The mechanisms of superplasticity in metals are still under debate—many believe it relies on atomic diffusion and the sliding of grains past each other. Also, when metals are cycled around their phase transformation, internal stresses are produced and superplastic-like behaviour develops. Recently high-temperature superplastic behaviour has also been observed in iron aluminides with coarse grain structures. It is claimed that this is due to recovery and dynamic recrystallization.[2]
  1. ^ G. E. Dieter, Mechanical Metallurgy, Third Edition, McGraw-Hill Inc., 1986, p. 299–301 and 452–453, ISBN 0-07-016893-8.
  2. ^ Sharma, Garima; Kishore, R.; Sundararaman, M.; Ramanujan, R.V. (15 March 2006). "Superplastic deformation studies in Fe-28Al-3Cr intermetallic alloy". Materials Science and Engineering: A 419 (1–2): 144–147. doi:10.1016/j.msea.2005.12.015.
  3. ^ T. G. Nieh, J. Wadsworth and O. D. Sherby (1997). Superplasticity in metals and ceramics. Cambridge University Press. pp. 240–246. ISBN 978-0-521-56105-....
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Could something like this be used?
- LRK -

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CHINA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 
NEWSLETTER 
The Ministry of Science and Technology 
People's Republic of China 

No. 470
March 3 0,2007
...
Super Plastic Bulk Metallic Glasses 
A research team, led by WANG Weihua at the Institute of Physics, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has successfully worked out super plastic bulk metallic glasses at room temperature, through binding the seemingly unbinding properties. The finding was published in a recent issue of journal Science. 
In contrast to the poor plasticity that is usually observed in bulk metallic glasses, super plasticity is achieved at room temperature in ZrCuNiAl synthesized through the appropriate choice of its composition by controlling elastic moduli. Microstructures analysis indicates that the super plastic bulk metallic glasses are composed of hard regions surrounded by soft regions, which enable the glasses to undergo true strains. This finding is suggestive of a solution to the problem of brittleness in, and has implications for understanding the deformation mechanism of metallic glasses. 
As the elements used in the new metallic glasses are popular metals that can be procured at a reasonable price, the new finding has created an important scientific and application perspective for the material. 
...
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Well I didn't see a definitive answer to exactly what was used to cushion the Chang'e 3 lander.
Maybe you saw something I missed.
Superplastic, nice sound, hmmmm.
- LRK -

Thanks for looking up with me. 
- LRK -
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK -

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CHANG’E-3 SATELLITE PAYLOAD APXS OBTAINED ITS FIRST SPECTRUM OF LUNAR REGOLITH

And the adventure begins.  Have a happy new year.
- LRK -
Figure 3 First X-ray fluorescent spectrum of lunar regolith obtained by APXS (image by IHEP)  SEE LINK BELOW FOR MORE IMAGES. - LRK -
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Text & Images:
http://english.ihep.cas.cn/prs/ns/201312/t20131230_115114.html

CHANG’E-3 SATELLITE PAYLOAD APXS OBTAINED ITS FIRST SPECTRUM OF LUNAR REGOLITH

The Active Particle-induced X-ray Spectrometer (APXS), carried by the Yutu rover of the Chang’e-3 satellite, got its first X-ray fluorescence spectrum of lunar regolith around the landing site on December 25, 2013.

An initial analysis indicates that eight major rock-forming elements (Mg, Al, Si, K, Ca, Ti, Cr and Fe) and at least 3 minor elements (Sr, Y and Zr) of the Moon can be identified in this spectrum. Besides, the energy resolution of APXS is estimated to be about 135 @ 5.9 keV, which demonstrates that it is currently one of the best X-ray spectrometers for planetary exploration in the world.

APXS was firstly powered on December 23, and an in-flight calibration of a standard basalt rock sample mounted on the rover was accomplished in five minutes, which proved its stable performance on the Moon. Two days later, APXS was successfully deployed to about two to three centimeters above the lunar regolith surface by the robotic arm of Yutu and started the detection mode. APXS was not only an X-ray spectrometer, but also served as a distance sensor during the deployment by making use of how X-ray count rate varied with distance.

The Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) developed APXS in collaboration with the Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO), CAS. Prior to the APXS on Chang’e-3, two X-ray spectrometers onboard Chang’e-1 and Chang’e-2 developed by IHEP scientists were launched respectively in October 2007 and October 2010.

Contact:
Mr. Xu Tongzhou
IHEP Public Affairs
+86 10-8823-5008
xutz@ihep.ac.cn
Copyright ©2002-2013 Institute of High Energy Physics, CAS
Questions and Comments to webmaster@ihep.ac.cn
mailing address:19B YuquanLu, Shijingshan District 
Beijing, 100049 FAX: 86-10-88233374 TEL: 86-10-88233093 

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Guang Pu Xue Yu Guang Pu Fen Xi. 2013 May;33(5):1360-3.

[Near infrared distance sensing method for Chang'e-3 alpha particle X-ray spectrometer].

[Article in Chinese]

Abstract

Alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS) is one of the payloads of Chang'E-3 lunar rover, the scientific objective of which is in-situ observation and off-line analysis of lunar regolith and rock. Distance measurement is one of the important functions for APXS to perform effective detection on the moon. The present paper will first give a brief introduction to APXS, and then analyze the specific requirements and constraints to realize distance measurement, at last present a new near infrared distance sensing algorithm by using the inflection point of response curve. The theoretical analysis and the experiment results verify the feasibility of this algorithm. Although the theoretical analysis shows that this method is not sensitive to the operating temperature and reflectance of the lunar surface, the solar infrared radiant intensity may make photosensor saturation. The solutions are reducing the gain of device and avoiding direct exposure to sun light.
PMID:
 
23905352
  
[PubMed - in process]

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Guang Pu Xue Yu Guang Pu Fen Xi. 2012 Jul;32(7):1965-8.

[Temperature effect correction for Chang'E-3 alpha particle X-ray spectrometer].

[Article in Chinese]

Abstract

Alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS) is one of the payloads of Chang'E-3 lunar rover of China's Lunar Exploration Project. The present paper introduces briefly the components of APXS, how it works and its working environment on the lunar surface. The environmental temperature effect has been studied with simulations and experiments, and the results show that the temperature of the APXS sensor will be varying during the measuring on the lunar surface. And another experiment reveals that the energy resolution becomes worse if the sensor's temperature is varying. In this paper, a correction method based on Pearson's chi-squared test is presented. The method can improve the energy resolution when the sensor's temperature is varying. We have tested the method with the spectra acquired by APXS in the temperature varying period of Temperature Cycling Test, and the results show that the method is efficient and reliable.
PMID:
 
23016364
  
[PubMed - in process]

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...
APXS (Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer):
APXS was developed by IHEP (Institute of High Energy Physics) of CAS. The objective is to measure the composition and distribution of various elements on the lunar surface by observing the scattered X-rays from the bombardment of alpha particles on rocks. Located on the rover’s robotic arm, APXS is capable of active particle scattering, in-situ determination of lunar surface elements, in-orbit calibration and distance measurement functions. The sensor can re-calibrate itself through the use of standard calibration targets, and the rover's lunar night survival contains a RHU (Radioisotope Heater Unit) for keeping the sensor warm. It has low energy consumption, low mass, high resolution, and high sensitivity semi-conductor sensors are used.
Change3_Auto0
Figure 17: APXS components (from left to right): sensor head, RHU & calibration target (image credit: CLEP, Ref. 2)
1) “Chang'e 3,” Dragon in Space, URL: http://www.dragoninspace.com/planetary/change3.aspx
2) Patrick Blau, “Chang'e 3 - Mission Overview,” Spaceflight 101, URL:http://www.spaceflight101.com/change-3.html
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Read more about China's Chang'e 3 mission.
- LRK -

Thanks for looking up with me. 
- LRK -
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK -

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Wednesday, December 25, 2013

NASA | Earthrise: The 45th Anniversary

It was nice to see the local TV News mentioning the 45th Anniversary of the Earthrise photo and the Apollo 8 flight around the Moon with the reading from the book of Genesis. 
- LRK -

Hope you can enjoy the visualization of the taking of the photos of Earth by the Apollo 8 astronauts.
- LRK -
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NASA | Earthrise: The 45th Anniversary

Published on Dec 20, 2013
In December of 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first people to leave our home planet and travel to another body in space. But as crew members Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders all later recalled, the most important thing they discovered was Earth.

Using photo mosaics and elevation data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), this video commemorates the 45th anniversary of Apollo 8's historic flight by recreating the moment when the crew first saw and photographed the Earth rising from behind the Moon. Narrator Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon, sets the scene for a three-minute visualization of the view from both inside and outside the spacecraft accompanied by the onboard audio of the astronauts.

The visualization draws on numerous historical sources, including the actual cloud pattern on Earth from the ESSA-7 satellite and dozens of photographs taken by Apollo 8, and it reveals new, historically significant information about the Earthrise photographs. It has not been widely known, for example, that the spacecraft was rolling when the photos were taken, and that it was this roll that brought the Earth into view. The visualization establishes the precise timing of the roll and, for the first time ever, identifies which window each photograph was taken from.

The key to the new work is a set of vertical stereo photographs taken by a camera mounted in the Command Module's rendezvous window and pointing straight down onto the lunar surface. It automatically photographed the surface every 20 seconds. By registering each photograph to a model of the terrain based on LRO data, the orientation of the spacecraft can be precisely determined.

This video is public domain and can be downloaded at:http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?4129

Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA's Goddard Shorts HD podcast:
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/iTunes/f...

Or find NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC

Or find us on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard

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Will be interesting to see China's Chang'e 3 mission UV pictures of Earth.
- LRK -

Thanks for looking up with me.  I hope mankind will again be able to view Earth from the moon.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=virgin-galactic-space-hotels
- LRK -
 
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK -

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Saturday, December 14, 2013

Sinus Iridum (the Bay of Rainbows)


With the Chang'e 3 mission duo landing on the Moon at the Bay of Rainbows, maybe a few links about Sinus Iridum are in order..
Let's start with Astro Bob's blog where he has the  video clips of the landing sequence to Sinus Iridum.
- LRK -

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Astro Bob - Celestial happenings you can see from your own backyard - 
Touchdown! China’s Chang’e 3 lands on the moon

You can settle back with your cup of morning coffee knowing that the Chinese moon lander successfully touched down on the lunar surface this morning at 7:11 a.m. (CST). The lander’s descent camera recorded a safe touchdown in the Bay of Rainbows, a 160-mile-wide (257 km) lava flooded relic crater in the moon’s northern hemisphere.

Chang’e 3′s onboard optical and microwave sensors guided the spacecraft during its final few hundred feet to the surface. At about 15 feet (4.5 m), the lander’s thrusters switched off and Chang’e 3 free fell the rest of the way to avoid kicking up too much moon dust.

- See more at: http://astrobob.areavoices.com/2013/12/14/touchdown-chinas-change-3-lands-on-the-moon/#sthash.L2KnlS62.dpuf
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Sky at Night as a nice article about Sinus Iridum.
Do take a look.
- LRK -

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Moonwatch – Sinus Iridum
Sinus Iridum
Image Credit: 
 Pete Lawrence
 

If you observe Sinus Iridum at precisely the right time, you'll see the famous Jewelled Handle


Sinus Iridum, or the Bay of Rainbows, is one of the loveliest features of the Moon: the Bay of Rainbows. It leads off the vast Mare Imbrium and was shown and named by the famous lunar observer Giovanni Riccioli in his map drawn in 1651. In those days, of course, it was generally believed that the dark areas really were seas, and that the Moon could well be a world suited to life.
 
Sinus Iridum is called a bay, but it is really a crater whose seaward wall has been virtually destroyed; only a few very low, disconnected fragments can be traced. Elsewhere the mountainous ‘wall’ is continuous and fairly high, though the outermost edge is disturbed for a short distance by the prominent crater Bianchini. The continuous section is bounded by two capes, Promontorium Heraclides and Promontorium Laplace.
The floor of Iridum slopes downward from the Mare Imbrium, so that at the far side it is about 200ft (61 metres) lower than the level of the Mare. There is nothing quite like this anywhere else on the Moon, but the sequence of events seems to be fairly straightforward. The Mare itself was formed during the lunar epoch named after it – the Imbrium – which ended over three thousand million years ago, so that it post-dates the Great Bombardment. The Iridum impact followed before the great lava-floods, which accounts for the inundation of the seaward wall.
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And what Wikipedia has to say.
- LRK -

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Sinus Iridum (Latin for "Bay of Rainbows") is a plain of basaltic lava that forms a northwestern extension to the Mare Imbrium. It is surrounded from the northeast to the southwest by the Montes Jura range. The protruding part of the range at the southwest end is namedPromontorium Heraclides, while that at the northeast end is called Promontorium Laplace. This bay and the surrounding mountains is considered one of the most beautiful features on the Moon, and is a favorite among lunar observers.
Sinus Iridum is formed from the remains of a large impact crater, which was subsequently flooded with basaltic lava, inundating the "sea" wall. It does not, itself, contain any notable impact craters, but does include the satellite crater Heraclides E in the south, Laplace A along the eastern edge, and Bianchini G in the north. The surface is level, but is marked by a number of wrinkle ridges.
The selenographic coordinates of this bay are 44.1° N, 31.5° W, and the diameter is 236 km.[1] The feature was given the latin name for the Bay of Rainbows by Giovanni Riccioli.

Chinese Moon Rover Mission[edit]

On December 14, 2013 the Chinese government successfully executed a soft landing of their rover on Sinus Iridum. The rover, named after the Chinese folklore of the Jade Rabbit (Simp. Chinese: 玉兔), is the first man made object to land on the moon in the 21st Century.
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The Planetary Society is following Chang'e 3 mission events as they unfold.
- LRK -

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Chang'e 3 has successfully landed on the Moon!
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla
2013/12/14 08:28 CST

Topics: pics of spacecraft in space, mission status, spacecraft,the Moon, Chang'E program

The official landing time for Chang'e 3 was 13:11:18 UT -- a full half-hour earlier than the time announced yesterday, which meant that I missed the action. Thank goodness for denizens of the Internet making screen caps of the images that the lander returned during its descent to the moon! There was not live video but there were video frames transmitted. According to a member of the mission team interviewed after the landing onChinese state television (CCTV), they expected 10 frames to be transmitted but actually received 59. Here is an animation of a few of them:
http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/space-images/earth/change-3-lands-on-the-moon.html
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Several links to Lunar Networks blog links.
- LRK -

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LUNAR NETWORKS

Chang'e-3 successfully lands on the Moon

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Remember Japan's orbiter mission, Kaguya, and its high definition videos?
Watch it again at Luna C/I: Moon Colonization and Integration blog by Nick Azer.
- LRK -

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Orbiting Atlas #1!: Sinus Iridum (The Bay of Rainbows) December 15, 2009
Posted by Nick Azer

Welcome to my brand new weekly feature—Orbiting Atlas! Each Monday, I’ll break out my lunar globe and trek to a different selenographic point of interest, giving you a tour of each location’s features, history, and potential :)

The first entry gets the honor for being in the news recently…so without further ado:

Sinus Iridum—The Bay of Rainbows

...
The circular “Bay”—given its name by Italian astronomer Giovanni Riccioli–is ringed by the Montes Jura, with the cape-like Promontorium Laplace jutting out along the northeast. The Bay has a diameter of ~149 miles, and lays at the northwest corner of the large, western plain Mare Imbrium, about 1,225 miles northwest of the Apollo 11 landing site and 620 miles northwest of the Apollo 15 site. 
...
Mare Imbrium’s lava plains are nearly flat, extending into Sinus Iridum (once a crater, with the southeast wall having been eliminated in an Imbrium event). These plains are prime territory for helium-3, and that stretch where there was once the southeastern wall may make for a revealing geological study.

It’s figured there’s a large amount of helium-3 on the Moon, but the distribution is unknown—so by scouting out a different mare, China could dig up valuable information on a region not already targeted for ‘gold rush’. Perhaps we’ll see a private company follow the Chinese lead, and scope it out for themselves…

Sinus Imbrium was a location filmed in 2007 by Japan’s orbiter, Kaguya, and it’s HDTV camera. Check out the amazing video below (and also be sure to explore the Bay in Google Earth 5.0′s spiffy Moon view!):
Uploaded on Mar 23, 2009
KAGUYA (SELENE) taking "Mare Imbrium and Sinus Iridum" by HDTV. Aspect ratio 16:9 and HD quality in English narration. (C)JAXA/NHK
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Hopefully we will get to see some tracks of the Chang'e 3 mission like we have from the Apollo 15 mission.
- LRK -

I am waiting to see if our local cable news has any sound bytes from this historical event.

Thanks for looking up with me.  
- LRK -
 
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK -

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China’s Chang’e-3 and Jade Rabbit duo land on the Moon

The Chang'e 3 mission duo have landed on the Moon.
Check out the NASA Spaceflight.com pictures and text.
- LRK -

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China’s Chang’e-3 and Jade Rabbit duo land on the Moon
December 14, 2013 by Rui C. Barbosa

China’s Chang’e-3 and the lunar rover Yutu (Jade Rabbit) have landed on the lunar surface at 1:11 pm UTC on Saturday. The duo were launched by a Long March 3B on December 1, which was followed by a nominal flight into lunar orbit and subsequently China’s first soft landing on the Moon.
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Also the previous Spaceflight.com post for more information.
- LRK -

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Chang’e-3: Chinese lunar rover heading to the Moon
December 1, 2013 by Rui C. Barbosa

The Chinese have begun their most ambitious lunar mission to date, following the successful launch their Long March 3B rocket carrying the Chang’e-3 probe and Yutu lunar rover. Launch was on schedule at 17:30 UTC on Sunday, taking place from the LC2 Launch Complex at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center.
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Watch a YouTube presentation of landing with images and Chinese and English commentary.
- LRK -

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China's Chang'e 3 JADE RABBIT landed on the Moon!! LIVE Footage From MOON
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And a bit from THE INDEPENDENT, Saturday 14 December 2013.
- LRK -

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China's Jade Rabbit rover lands on moon
HEATHER SAUL 
 Saturday 14 December 2013

China has reported landing its Jade Rabbit rover on the moon, in the first soft landing of a rover in nearly four decades today, the latest step in the country's ambitious space programme.

The Chang'e 3 lander was scheduled to touch down at 9.40pm local time (1.40pm GMT).

State television showed pictures of the moon's surface as the Chang'e 3 lander touched down shortly before this.

The lander carries the moon rover called Yutu, or “Jade Rabbit” which was launched onboard the Chang'e 3 rocket on 1 December. After landing, the rover is slated to separate from the Chang'e and begin a three-month scientific exploration, looking for natural resources.
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Hopefully there will be more videos after the stored data is received and further check out is completed.
Feel free to let me know if you spot something of interest.
- LRK -

Thanks for looking up with me.  
- LRK -
 
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK -

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Thursday, December 12, 2013

Lunar Soil - the fine fraction of the regolith found on the surface of the Moon.

With the present interests in what is going on at our Moon and about to happen with the Chang'e 3 mission, you might wonder if there is any possibility to put humans there again. If you just stay for three days you can bring your own box lunches.  If you really want to think about staying for any extended time you may want to grow some fresh vegetables. 

Easier said than done. Down here on Earth, just throw some soil in a pot, some seeds, add some water, air, and light. Maybe control the temperature range. [brrr, it has been cold this last week and the pepper plant leaves have curled up.]

Hmm, at the lunar environment the composition of soil is different than what I might get here for potting soil. The more we learn about what is available on the Moon, the better we will be able to prepare our indoor hot house.  The less we have to bring up to the Moon the better. 

Both the Chang'e 3 lander and rover will help analyze soil samples and a later mission plans to return some lunar soil to Earth.

Since we will need to dig in to be protected from solar radiation it will be good to know what is under the lunar soil. The Chang'e Jade Rabbit rover has a ground penetrating radar that should be useful. 

- LRK -

Check out the references to the Wikipedia articles that follow. - LRK -
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Chang'e 3 (Chinese: 嫦娥三号; pinyin: Cháng'é Sānhào) is a lunar exploration mission operated by the China National Space Administration, incorporating a robotic lander and a rover. Chang'e 3 was launched on the morning of 2 December 2013 local time (17:30 1 December UTC), which is part of the second phase of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program.[5][9][10] It will be China's first lunar rover.
The spacecraft is named after Chang'e, the goddess of the Moon in Chinese mythology, and is a follow-up to the Chang'e 1 and Chang'e 2 lunar orbiters. The lunar rover is called Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, a name selected in an online poll that comes from a Chinese myth about a white rabbit that lives on the Moon as a companion of the moon goddess Chang'e.[11] It achieved lunar orbit on 6 December 2013 (Beijing time).[12]
...
This article or section documents a current or recent spaceflight. Details may change as the mission progresses.
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A look at what lunar soil is.
- LRK -

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Lunar soil is the fine fraction of the regolith found on the surface of the Moon. Its properties can differ significantly from those of terrestrial soil. The physical properties of lunar soil are primarily the result of mechanical disintegration of basaltic and anorthositic rock, caused by continuous meteoric impact and bombardment by interstellar charged atomic particles over billions of years. The process is largely one of mechanical weathering in which the particles are ground to finer and finer size over time. This situation contrasts fundamentally to terrestrial soil formation, mediated by the presence of molecular oxygen (O2), humidity, atmospheric wind, and a robust array of contributing biological processes. Some have argued that the term "soil" is not correct in reference to the Moon because on the Earth, soil is defined as havingorganic content, whereas the Moon has none. However, standard usage among lunar scientists is to ignore that distinction.
The term lunar soil is often used interchangeably with "lunar regolith" but typically refers to only the finer fraction of regolith, that which is composed of grains one cm in diameter or less.[1] Lunar dust generally connotes even finer materials than lunar soil. There is no official definition of what size fraction constitutes "dust", some place the cutoff at less than 50 micrometres in diameter, others at less than 10.
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Not all of the Moon's surface is pulverized to dust and so we will need to be able to adapt to varying terrain.
- LRK -

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Regolith is a layer of loose, heterogeneous material covering solid rock. It includes dust, soil, broken rock, and other related materials and is present on Earth, the Moon, Mars, some asteroids, and other terrestrial planets and moons.
...
Moon
Regolith covers almost the entire lunar surface, bedrock protruding only on very steep-sided crater walls and the occasional lava channel. This regolith has formed over the last 4.6 billion years from the impact of large and small meteoroids, from the steady bombardment of micrometeoroids and from solar and galactic charged particles breaking down surface rocks.
The impact of micrometeoroids, sometimes travelling faster than 60,000 mph (96,000 km/h), generates enough heat to melt or partially vaporize dust particles. This melting and refreezing welds particles together into glassy, jagged-edged agglutinates,[2] reminiscent oftektites found on Earth.
The regolith is generally from 4 to 5 metres thick in mare areas and from 10 to 15 metres in the older highland regions.[3] Below this true regolith is a region of blocky and fractured bedrock created by larger impacts, which is often referred to as the "megaregolith".
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The more real lunar soil samples we have the better lunar soil simulant that can be created. These are needed when you start thinking about using lunar materials for on site construction.  I wonder if any of the below is still available.

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Engineering, Construction, and Operations in Space IV
American Society of Civil Engineers, pp. 857-866, 1994

JSC-1: A NEW LUNAR SOIL SIMULANT

David S. McKay, James L. Carter, Walter W. Boles,

Carlton C. Allen, and Judith H. Allton

A new lunar soil simulant, JSC-1, has been developed and characterized under the auspices of the NASA Johnson Space Center. This simulant was produced in large quantities to satisfy the requirements of a variety of scientific and engineering investigations. JSC-1 is derived from volcanic ash of basaltic composition, which has been ground, sized, and placed into storage. The simulant's chemical composition, mineralogy, particle size distribution, specific gravity, angle of internal friction, and cohesion have been characterized and fall within the ranges of lunar mare soil samples. JSC-1 is available for only the cost of shipping.

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Well it looks like some other more recent sources have been made. 

And CAS-1 Lunar Soil Simulant from China..


Thanks for looking up with me.  
- LRK -
 
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK -

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