The Chinese Chang'E 2 lunar orbiter,was equiped  with several webcams enabling the operators to inspect the vehicle. Some of these videos are now available on Youtube for a unique outside view of a spaceship Five views from engineering cameras of important events in the Chang'E 2 spacecraft's journey to the Moon. It's a thrill to see actual human-built artifacts out there in space, and we don't believe we have ever seen actual video of such key mission events on robotic missions except from rocket-mounted cameras before.

You can see the solar panels bouncing back and forth after they deploy; you can see the throat of the main engine glowing with every firing; you can see the Moon and Earth swinging behind the view. One of our favorite moments in all these videos is the beginning of the "Second Orbit Trim maneuver" video, when the Moon rolls and rotates behind view of the main engine with the spacecraft's series of rolls. You get the sense of a human-built machine working like utter clockwork as the rugged, ancient scarps of lunar craters lurk in the background, just waiting for us to explore them.

&feature=player_embedded" href="/&feature=player_embedded">See them on Youtube here