Monitoring motion and measuring relative position of the Chang'E‐3 rover

Abstract

Abstract Same‐beam very long baseline interferometry observations were performed between the rover and the lander of Chang'E‐3 and differential phase delay data were obtained with the minimum random error of about 0.03 ps. These data were used to monitor the rover motions, as small as several centimeters, including movement, turning, and attitude adjustment. The relative position between the rover and the lander was precisely measured with an accuracy of 1 m, which is an improvement of 10 times compared with that of the Apollo project.