Orbit determination of Chang’E-3 and positioning of the lander and the rover

Chang’E-3 landed on the east of Sinus Iridum area on December 14, 2013, performing China’s first successful soft landing on the lunar surface. We present the results on precision orbit determination and positioning of the lander and the rover. We describe the data, modeling, and methods used to achieve position knowledge over the period December 2–21, 2014. In addition to the radiometric X-band range and Doppler tracking data, delta differential one-way ranging data are also used in the calculation, which show that they strongly improve the accuracy of the orbit reconstruction. Total position overlap differences are about 20 and 30 m for the 100 km × 100 km and 100 km× 15 km lunar orbit, respectively, increased by ~50 % with respect to CE-2 and at the same level as other lunar spacecrafts of recent era such as SELENE and lunar reconnaissance orbiter (LRO). The position error of the soft landing trajectory is less than 100 m. A kinematic statistical method is applied to determine the position of the lander and relative position of the rover with respect to the lander. The position difference of the lander is better than 50 m compared to LRO photograph result. Compared with the delta very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) group delay between the lander and the rover, the delta VLBI phase delay can improve the relative position of the rover from ~1,000 to ~1 m.