NASA 'Snoopy' Lunar Module Likely Found 50 Years After Being Jettisoned Into Space (techcrunch.com) 117
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: NASA's trip to the Moon's surface in July 1969 was preceded by a lot of preparatory missions -- including Apollo 10, which involved a mock mission with everything but the actual landing. Astronauts Thomas Stafford and Eugene Cernan flew a lunar module, nicknamed "Snoopy" by the agency, nearly all the way to the Moon during Apollo 10, and then shot the module off into space once they'd completed their task. There was never any intent to return Snoopy to Earth -- it was sent into an orbit around the sun beyond the Moon after the astronauts completed their maneuvers and returned to the command module, and NASA did not track its trajectory. The effort to discover its location began in 2011, undertaken by a group of amateur U.K. astronomers led by Nick Howes -- the same who now claim they're "98 percent convinced" they've discovered where it ended up, according to Sky News. Howes' further speculated that if they confirm its location, someone like Elon Musk could recover it and preserve it as a key cultural artifact.
Maybe the amateur team can find MH 370 (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Maybe the amateur team can find MH 370 (Score:5, Informative)
Hard to believe they can find the Snoopy lunar module but not Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
Well, if you know at what point in space and at what time the module was jettisoned you can determine it's trajectory and where it would likely be 50 years later. With MH370, they don't even know at what point it went into the ocean, or even if/how intact the aircraft was when it hit and subsequently sunk. Considering the ocean in that area goes up to 15000 ft deep, you could have a debris field miles wide and so dispersed that it would be hard to find anything. For example, the debris field of the Titanic, which sunk mostly intact-besides the biggest breakup until the Beatles, is at 12500 ft and covers an area of 3mi by 5mi. While a 777 is much smaller than the Titanic, a plane hitting the water at speed would instantly break up, giving the debris more time to disperse.
Or, if you want to believe the conspiracy theories, it's sitting camouflaged on a forgotten WWII island airfield somewhere waiting to be used for a false flag terror attack. But I would say the first option is more likely.
Re:MH 370 never existed! (Conspiracy theory.) Yeah (Score:1)
Yeah.... notwithstanding the pieces of fucking matching airframe debris that begain washing up on assorted beaches & were found and turned in by tourists/locals approx. a year later, beaches that were consistent with drift models for a crash site in that southern latitude ocean, one of the roughest and most remote ocean spots on the entire fucking planet, I might add.
A better question would be....why haven't these fucking planes had trackers installed in them, you know, for like the past 20+ motherfuck
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A better question would be....why haven't these fucking planes had trackers installed in them, you know, for like the past 20+ motherfucking years already?
Because the technology wasn't there, or was vastly too expensive to use.
Yes, all problems can be solved if money is no issue, but if you start demanding 100% global tracking coverage based on 1990s technology, commercial passenger travel becomes more expensive as a result - aircraft rarely go missing in such a fashion that they cannot be found, so what exactly would this have solved? Great, we might have found MH370, but its unlikely that finding MH370 would have a safety benefit as its almost universally
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A car can be tracked by GPS system and an external service receiving that GPS location.
A phone can be tracked by GPS and an external service receiving that GPS location.
It's the "and an external service receiving that GPS location" which is the issue here. In 2001, during the September 11th airspace closure, US air traffic control had huge issues contacting aircraft inbound to the US over the North Atlantic because radio and other communication methods were extremely patchy and unreliable, to the point whe
Re: Maybe the amateur team can find MH 370 (Score:2)
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It's a lot easier when there's no atmosphere or ocean to obscure your view.
Re:Maybe the amateur team can find MH 370 (Score:5, Informative)
Even if all those devices somehow magically survived a catastrophic crash, it's not like there's wifi hot spots or Bluetooth receivers in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
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What delusional ignorance makes you believe your personal tracking device works any differently?
Hey Anonymous Coward, what delusional ignorance makes YOU think there are cell towers bobbing in the middle of the Indian Ocean, thousands of miles from land?
just leave it in space (Score:2)
leave it in space and let it become the first space exhibit, it will be a nice piece once space travel becomes cheap.
Re:just leave it in space (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder what condition it is in now. It's probably degraded significantly, due to repeated heating and cooling cycles, impacts from micro meteorites, and bleaching by the sun.
Re:just leave it in space (Score:5, Informative)
I was at the talk last week (it was very good!). The condition will be interesting, which is one of the good reasons to go get it - to see the effect of long term exposure in space. When it disengaged from Charlie Brown, the airlock blew, so it was depressurised almost immediately. Micrometorites may have penetrated it, but it's orbital path doesn't bring it into contact with the rest of our space junk very often. Indeed the fact that it depressurised straight away and did not have it's orbit later impacted by something punching a hole and causing a leak is one of the reasons why they could tentatively predict it's location after so many years. Then looking for candidate objects in the vast historical telescope data allowed them to whittle it down to 3 possibiliies. One of which turned out to be a Saturn V second stage! But this object has the right sort of spectroscopy, and has the right sort of radar return for a tumbling object with the shape of a lunar ascent stage. But we need to get a closer look to be sure. One idea suggested at the talk would be to get students involved to design some cube-sats to go take a picture when it next comes close (in the 2030s).
But one thing we know is that befoe it was jetisonned, the astronauts filled it with their fecal waste bags... So it might be a bit niffy if and when it gets back to earth.
Re: just leave it in space (Score:1)
You must mean a Saturn V third stage. The highest any second stage ever got was low earth orbit.
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Great post, thanks. I wonder if any of the bacteria in there could be revived after all this time. We know organisms can survive being exposed to vacuum, and of course some of it may still be pressurised e.g. sealed bags and other containers.
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If you skip to the end, you'll find out that the big conclusion to "Where did humans come from?" was bacteria from some other civilization's astronaut shit bags.
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It's open to space for over 50 years, so that's about as vacuum vent as you're going to get.
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I wonder what condition it is in now. It's probably degraded significantly, due to repeated heating and cooling cycles, impacts from micro meteorites, and bleaching by the sun.
It's structure is made of metal. The very mild heating and cooling cycles (compared to what metal can withstand), and effects of sunlight on metal would be insignificant. The timescale of meteoroid erosion is in the millions of years. So it has probably not degraded significantly.
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It's quite arrogant to think bringing it back to Earth will preserve it better than leaving it up there.
But I do think in a few hundred years most important space artifacts like this, or voyagers for that matter, will have flying hotels keeping them company.
"Attention guests! The hotel will be maneuvering to the other side of Voyager today so as to counteract the subtle tug from its microgravity on Voyager. Watch for it at 11 am!"
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lol what is it with you space cadets
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9705/2... [cnn.com]
didn't happen then
won't happen ever
Yeah, Right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: just leave it in space (Score:2)
It's quite arrogant to think bringing it back to Earth will preserve it better than leaving it up there.
Any "arrogance" that you imagine you perceive is quite likely your own projection.
Rendezvous with Rama (Score:3)
Somewhere on a tiny planet on the Sun-Earth L3 point, Antiterrans have discovered a vessel made by an unknown intelligent extraantiterrestrial race, and are planning to send a crew to explore it.
Re:Rendezvous with Rama (Score:4, Funny)
Perhaps it will fall into a black hole, come out the other side where it will encounter a machine civilization where it will be rebuilt to carry out its mission to put all the Peanuts characters in outer space.
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It's been done
Journey to the Far Side of the Sun
https://youtu.be/Zyv6n2TLWco [youtu.be]
Re: Rendezvous with Rama (Score:2)
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Artie 'Pedo' Clarke
You do realise that the allegations against Clarke were found to be baseless, and the reporters who made the allegations were fired, right?
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You apparently don't realise that Arthur C. Clarke wrote not only about half of "2001", but also all of the short story that 2001 was based on "the Sentinel", in 1948, as well as all of the short-short story "'Passer-by" (about an ancient alien spacecraft spotted in Earth orbit) in 1957, long before any of your whackadoodle conspiracy theories were even born.
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Re:"Someone like Elon Musk" (Score:4, Funny)
someone like Elon Musk could recover it
Why should Musk recover it? It's NASA's freakin' space-trash. You dropped it. You pick it up.
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Same reason he put a car in space. Bragging rights.
I'm not saying that this is a good reason but it is a reason. Personally, I think it should be left alone as long as it's not a navigation hazard or the like.
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No he doesn't "trigger" me snowflake. I just think he is an asshole. You know what an "asshole" is, Millennial?
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But... you don't think Jobs was an asshole? Is Elon parking in handicapped spaces now?
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here is another asshole. I am old so I know what it means. Come to think of it all that eat will most likely know the concept of an asshole too so unless we have plants here your comment is misguided. As for Musk - he had many failed projects and one that still stands and this one that stands is the rocket business. Maybe he is a fake too but his rockets fly. They also burn less than his cars made by tesla but that is irrelevant. Being a great leader he does not know where to stop and he is an asshole to mo
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We could feed the plastics to the hungry as school lunches.
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That's already been tried. [cbsnews.com]
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I wonder how many children saw "space junk" in a museum one day and were inspired to take up a career in science or engineering, then going on to contribute to major, life-improving advances back here on Earth. I can think of at least three significant technologies directly inspired just by seeing TV shows about "space junk".
Space junk leading to better life (Score:2)
Go ahead then.
I have no idea what the above AC was referring to.
But here's an example:
CMOS sensors [nasa.gov] is a technology that was initially developped for space (being simpler, more compact and energy efficient than the then CCD type sensors).
Eventually this led to the ubiquity of CMOS camera in nearly every modern smart object (E.g: smartphone have multiple of them).
This means that now we have cheap mass produced small compact efficient image sensors.
This make them affordable for image sensing in medical application.
Random ex
Re:thats a great idea!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
lets spend hundreds of millions of dollars or a few billion dollars recovering some old space junk instead of spending on something humanity really needs like R&D in alternatives to the plastics that is slowly choking and poisoning this planet which is the only home we have, or alternative food sources that will help feed the hungry, or better education,
Well, recovering Snoopy to a closer Earth orbit would probably be good practice for eventually capturing asteroids to mine. Nowhere near the same mass, but you have to start somewhere.
Good video on the subject (Score:5, Interesting)
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And most importantly, who created the space-turd?
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Space-hicks.
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That's unknown. I believe all Stafford, Cernan, and Young all disclaimed it.
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So...he who denied it supplied it?
Re:Good video on the subject (Score:4, Insightful)
"recover it and preserve it as a key cultural artifact"
I can think of no better way of preserving it than to just let it stay in its current orbit or maybe nudge it into a safer orbit if needed.
Taken back to Earth it is not only a static artifact, but now it something that was set in its current motion by those historic events.
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Why was Snoopy, of all the LEM ascent stages, the only one still around?
All the other LEM's that went to the moon (except Apollo 13) were deliberately smashed into the moon so that the sensors deployed by the landing party could measure the impact. This helped calibration of the sensors using a known mass and known velocity.
Since Apollo 10 didn't have a landing party (and thus no deployed sensors), they just jettisoned it into space.
I forget if the Apollo 13 LEM was jettisoned into space or burnt up in Earth's atmosphere.
Might be worth checking if the LEM tests done in Earth or
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Thanks
Salvage 1, Baby! (Score:2)
10, 20, 30, 40, 50 or more (Score:3)
"nicknamed "Snoopy" by the agency" - nope (Score:2, Interesting)
This was the last mission where the astronaut crew (not the agency) had naming rights for their mission modules. Since the astronaut-picked names became less and less PR-compatible over the series of the Apollo flights, this right was taken away from them before the Big Event. Only the names of the modules of Apollo 11 and later were selected by NASA heads (who were switched into full patriotic mode beforehand).
Re:"nicknamed "Snoopy" by the agency" - nope (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. Astronauts picked the names. NASA brass just had final approval.
Read "Carrying the Fire", "Forever Young", etc...
Glory Temptation (Score:1, Informative)
They purposely didn't put in enough take-off fuel into the lander to avoid the temptation of the astronauts to actually land.
Hang on (Score:2)
Sloopy lives in a very bad part of town
And everybody yeah, tries to put my Sloopy down
Well Sloopy I don't care what your daddy do
Cause' you know Sloopy girl I'm in love with you
And so I say now
Hang on Sloopy, Sloopy hang on
Hang on Sloopy, Sloopy hang on
Leave it up there (Score:2)
It will be there for future generations, long after we and our society are gone. Civilizations rose and perished over the course of the centuries, and more often than not their monuments went away with them when the new rulers took over. We might consider our society and civilization eternal, but so did the Romans. And if there was one thing new rulers could do really well, it was destroying the artifacts of those that came before them.