Zhoubin Zhang

Scientific data and their release of Chang’E-1 and Chang’E-2

The Chang’E-1 and Chang’E-2 missions have successfully obtained a huge amount of lunar scientific data, through the seven onboard instruments including a CCD stereo camera, a laser altimeter, an interference imaging spectrometer, an X-ray spectrometer, a microwave radiometer, a high-energy particle detector and a solar-wind ion detector. Most of the Chang’E data are now publicly available to the science community, and this article serves as an official guide on how these data are classified and organized, and how they can be retrieved from http://159.226.88.59:7779/CE1OutENGWeb/. This article also presents the detailed specifications of various instruments and gives examples of research progress made based on these instruments.

Chinese and Russian Language Equivalents of the IAU Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature: an Overview of Planetary Toponym Localization Methods

ABSTRACT The Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature (GPN) is maintained by the International Astronomical Union Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature. It contains the internationally approved forms of place names of planetary and lunar surface features. In the last decades, spacefaring and other nations have started to develop local standardized equivalents of the GPN. This initiated the development of transformation methods and created a need for auxiliary information on the names in the GPN that is not available from the database of the GPN. The creation of ‘localized’ (local language) variants of the GPN in non-Roman scripts is an unavoidable necessity, but is also a cultural need. This paper investigates the localization methods into Chinese and Russian; two nations with different scripts, and two that are spacefaring ones. The need for the creation of a localized GPN is related to the local importance of scientific papers published in the local language and the existence of locally developed and operated scientific planetary spacecraft, but exceptions exist.

Nomenclature for lunar features at the Chang’e-3 landing site

Nomenclatures for lunar features always accompany the progresses of human lunar exploration, which has an important dual meaning in culture and science. The naming of lunar features not only can commemorate the outstanding contributions of academics, masters in various fields, and popularize the traditional cultures of ethnic groups all over the world, but also have a critical function of providing accurate indicative information on features with special morphology, origin, nature and scientific value. However, nomenclature for features at the Chang’e-3 landing site, which has a more arbitrary form without many constrains posed by a uniformed system, is unlike the features for other morphological units. This paper originated from the actual needs for the description of scientific exploration activities, interpretation of scientific research and dissemination of scientific results. Some prominent morphological units with great scientific importance and identification purpose were chosen from the images taken by the terrain camera, panorama cameras and landing camera onboard the Chang’e lander and Yutu rover. A nomenclature system was established under the three enclosures, four quadrants and twenty-eight lunar lodges’ system of the Chinese ancient sky division method. Finally, a standard feature names set was published after some necessary approval procedures by the International Astronomical Union.