Photos Stream Back From China's Lunar Lander 268
After the successful soft landing of its carrier vessel on the surface of the moon, China's Jade Rabbit lunar rover has begun beaming back photos of the lunar surface. From the BBC's article, with links to video as well as several photos, comes this description: "Chang'e-3 is the third unmanned rover mission to touch down on the lunar surface, and the first to go there in more than 40 years. The last was an 840kg (1,900lb) Soviet vehicle known as Lunokhod-2, which was kept warm by polonium-210. But the six-wheeled Chinese vehicle carries a more sophisticated payload, including ground-penetrating radar which will gather measurements of the lunar soil and crust. The 120kg (260lb) Jade Rabbit rover can reportedly climb slopes of up to 30 degrees and travel at 200m (660ft) per hour. ... The rover and lander are powered by solar panels but some sources suggest they also carry radioisotope heating units (RHUs), containing plutonium-238 to keep them warm during the cold lunar night. According to Chinese space scientists, the mission is designed to test new technologies, gather scientific data and build intellectual expertise. It will also scout valuable mineral resources that could one day be mined."
Rocks (Score:5, Interesting)
There are some rocks of significant size immediately behind the rover. Those are certainly large enough for the rover to get hung on or to flip it over on its side. I'm surprised the lander touched down within just a few feet of rocks like that. Either their hazard avoidance system looks only directly beneath the footprint of the lander, or it failed to properly detect those rocks. Had it landed just 50% closer to those rocks, the ramp the rover descended would have been right on them..
Re:Rocks (Score:5, Interesting)
Chiang'e 3 had a ~30 second "hovering" stage during its decent, during which it scanned the area it was over (using radar and laser IIRC), and itself made the decision where exactly to land based on that information.
AFAIK ground control could have interrupted and overridden the process at any stage, but did not.
Re:Ignoring China ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ignoring China ? (Score:5, Interesting)
And if it weren't for the Nazi scientists, the US and Soviet space programs wouldn't have existed. The only mostly isolated nation is North Korea, and we know how that's working out for them (great, if you go by the Great Leader's and his buddies opinion).
Obviously Robert Goddard was a Nazi scientist. And Dr. Buzz Aldrin never wrote any papers about spaceflight that by itself would ensure his role in the history of mankind (ignoring his weekend camping trip he took in the summer of 1969 that was broadcast as a reality TV show). And of course Konstantin Tsiolkovsky [wikipedia.org] and Sergei Korolyov [wikipedia.org] were just a bunch of stupid lab assistants who knew nothing about rocket science either.
This kind of stuff is pure BS. Yes, there were some German scientists who did some impressive things with rockets and their assistance was useful for perhaps pushing ahead the American and Russian space programs by about a decade or so in the 1950's. But to suggest that the programs wouldn't have existed at all is a bit of a stretch when it is patently clear there were plenty of both Russians and Americans who were active in trying to get spaceflight including manned spaceflight happening in their lifetimes. Werner Von Braun openly acknowledged both Goddard and Tsiolkovsky (together with Oberth.... who was never a Nazi either) by name in his autobiography as inspiration for his work.
Re:US propaganda machine behind Hollywood moon lan (Score:5, Interesting)
Big difference: China landings are driven by science and verifiable by high-tech equipment.
US Hollywood moon landings were driven by hate towards Russians who put first man in space.
Here I was expecting some troll to criticize the Chinese effort for being a copy of what was done 40+ years ago, or simply a stunt. Instead I find a troll saying "China landings are ... verifiable by high-tech equipment", thus implying that US efforts weren't. Are you a conspiracy nut suggesting the US landings were faked?
"China landings are driven by science ...". The science is great, but if you think that prestige and publicity aren't part of the reason for the Chinese effort, then I've got a bridge to sell you. I've also got no problem with that being part of the motivation.
"US Hollywood moon landings were driven by hate towards Russians who put first man in space." Wow, you've heard about the space race - a term that was coined at the time because it described the obvious. BTW, what do you think motivated the USSR? It wouldn't have been a race without at least two sides. However, "hate" is a ridiculously way to describe such a competition. Whatever you say about the motivation, the space race was a lot more peaceful than the arms race. A nice side effect was all the science done and the technology developed. Out of curiosity though, what was Hollywood about the moon landings? That they televised it? Not even Hollywood is that good - it got 125M viewers around the world. Maybe it had something to do with it being such an impressive and historic event, albeit a silly thing like the first time that people set foot on any body other than the earth.
P.S. You also overlook that this Chinese probe is more analogous to a Soviet mission of 40 years ago, than to the manned US landings, But hey, any idiotic excuse to bash the US, right?
Mare Imbrium (Score:5, Interesting)
The lander did not land in Sinus Iridum, but in Mare Imbrium [astrogatorsguild.com] proper.
I do not think this was a mistake, as they could have waited a few more orbits and made the original landing point in Sinus Iridum. For some reason, a site in Mare Imbrium was chosen. As the actual landing site is on the border between the Titanium rich and Titanium poor [usra.edu] parts of Sinus Iridum, I suspect this was not an arbitrary choice, but driven by a desire to understand better the mineral resources of the Moon.
If we are really lucky, the rover will drive the 120 km North to Montes Recti [wikipedia.org], a mountain range to the North. (These mountains are really islands of old terrain high enough to avoid being submerged in the Mare Imbrium lava flows.) At 100 m/day, it would only take 3 years...
Re:Those who think that moon landing was a fake .. (Score:4, Interesting)
I always begin these by saying that, yes, I believe the moon landings are real.
That said, I would imagine the radio signals from the Moon would be the easiest part. Land a receiver and transmitter that just takes what it receives on one channel and broadcasts it back to Earth. If you take the live feed from NASA and send it to the astronauts who reply immediately, it will take the appropriate amount of time for NASA to receive the signal from the Moon and no one at NASA would be wiser (except for the conspirator who was making sure the live signal went to the astronauts).
It's a neat thing to think about--not whether they were faked but how could they have been faked. How much of a mission would you have to go through? I mean, we heard from Neil, Buzz, and Michael the whole trip out and then we heard from Buzz and Neil on the Moon. You could conceivably use a similar technique for voice communication, but the weightless part inside the capsule would be pretty tough to do on Earth. Did they do TV broadcasts from inside the capsule (like was shown on Apollo 13)? The capsule could have stayed in orbit--either Earth or lunar--but that would be tricky to sync up the movements of the fake moon-walking astronauts with the voices from the capsule.
One of the questions I have for the conspiracy nuts is what missions were faked? Only the Apollo missions? Assuming it was only the Apollo missions, then the Surveyor missions weren't faked and that shows that NASA could land equipment in the Moon. Were all the Apollo missions faked? Apollo 8 and Apollo 10 sent men around the Moon. Were those faked?
Trends (Score:5, Interesting)
Developing nations are generally doing some or all of the three:
1) Building their industrial base
2) Providing free or low cost education
3) Providing free or low cost health care
The United States is doing the opposite of that. Our infrastructure is crumbling, our lack of high speed rail is a joke, as is our lack of mass transit outside of a few major cities, and our internet and cell phone networks are a decade behind Europe's. More job-crushing trade laws are being pushed (TPP), getting a college degree means five or six figures of debt, and the trivial detail that Obomneycare will still leave the U.S. with the worst health care system in the industrialized world.
How are those trends sustainable for the United States, where 80% of the population is in poverty or a paycheck away from it?
Perhaps US geeks are not their target audience (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps delivering high resolution images to US/ Western geeks is not their primary mission. Perhaps a few low res snapshots to keep the western media off their back (see, we really did it, put away your conspiracy theory stories) is all they felt obliged to do.
Maybe there's a high res camera sending pictures back to their scientific research / military people and they just don't feel the need to distribute this material to the general public in other countries. The Chinese funding model might not be the same as the USA's, maybe they don't need to distribute high res holiday snaps to ensure continued funding.
Perhaps there's no high res camera on board because the science of the mission doesn't need any more than a few low res snaps. The real work might be elsewhere. I've read a couple of articles that note that the lander is much bigger than you might expect for a rover of this size, so it might be the real mission here is to test lander technologies in preparation for sending a manned mission. It might be that the real science is around testing that platform, and the rover is just supplementary, a nice addition for extra kudos and you might as well do it while you're there.