India's Crashed Vikram Moon Lander Spotted On Lunar Surface (theguardian.com) 60
A NASA satellite has found India's Vikram lander, which crashed on the lunar surface in September. The Guardian reports: Nasa released an image taken by its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) that showed the site of the spacecraft's impact and associated debris field, with parts scattered over almost two dozen locations spanning several kilometers. In a statement, Nasa said it had released a mosaic image of the site on 26 September, inviting the public to search it for signs of the lander.
It added that a person named Shanmuga Subramanian contacted the LRO project with a positive identification of debris -- with the first piece found about 750 meters north-west of the main crash site. Blasting off in July, emerging Asian giant India had hoped with its Chandrayaan-2 ("moon vehicle 2") mission to become just the fourth country after the U.S., Russia and regional rival China to make a successful moon landing, and the first on the lunar south pole.
It added that a person named Shanmuga Subramanian contacted the LRO project with a positive identification of debris -- with the first piece found about 750 meters north-west of the main crash site. Blasting off in July, emerging Asian giant India had hoped with its Chandrayaan-2 ("moon vehicle 2") mission to become just the fourth country after the U.S., Russia and regional rival China to make a successful moon landing, and the first on the lunar south pole.
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Vikram was to be solar powered, not an RTG, which was why it was scheduled to function for only one Lunar day. Shows them right on every photo of the lander.
Re:The 1960s called... (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, I am sure your lander works a lot better than that!
The USA had 6 failed Ranger missions in a row - and all they were doing was trying to intentionally crash.
Re:The 1960s called... (Score:5, Insightful)
If it wasn't for the fact that Armstrong took over the driving from a computer, he and Buzz would most likely have wound up in one hell of a pickle and not landed in a position where taking back off would have been possible. Soft landing a fixed space craft on the moon by remote computer control ain't easy, even with today's sensors and computing power even the slightest glitch means kerr splat without a human to take over and do the final descent if necessary. What was achieved in the 1960's and 70's only happened because we pulled together even though the Vietnam war divided us greatly.
Today with all the divisive bullshit going on the exploration of space is not possible. The racism that has been unleashed by the assholes currently in power in the USA has to be put in perspective and called down for what it really is before we can begin to pursue the advancement of the technology necessary for the exploration of even the closest places within our solar system.
Belittling the attempts of others is completely and idiotically counter productive. And much worse the name calling is a symptom of a deadly sickness within our society that is beginning to cripple the cooperation necessary for the advancement of all science. I am surprised the asshole that calls the peoples from India "Hindu Chimps" has not shown his ugly ass on this one yet. Maybe he/she or it lost internet connection in it's parent's basement or they cut it off after reading it's slashdot posts!
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The right answer at the right time, thank you.
Re:The 1960s called... (Score:4, Informative)
Luna 9 made a soft automated landing 1966 (Score:2)
Using Soviet computers! Must have been very crude. Probably lots of analog computation.
(The Soviets actually won every stage of the Space Race except the last, man on the moon. I always wondered why they did not simply send a cosmonaut one way. Doable given they could land a machine, much easier, and one man lost is insignificant to mother Russia.)
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And keep in mind that Vikram only cost $141 million including launch expenses.
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...and had the benefit of over 50 years of lander experience, Moore's law, and advancements of science & engineering. That will raise the price one or two trillion dollars.
It's not only about the program's costs. Hopefully they have learned from the experience and that they have better luck next time. Otherwise, the $141 went to waste.
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Hopefully they have learned from the experience
I really don't get the whole assumption that non-European peoples are stupid. Even snails learn from experience. I haven't met a person yet who doesn't learn from experience, with the possible exception of Libertardians.
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Even with the lander crashing it's not a loss of a mission. The other component was an orbiter going around the moon collecting data which is still up there doing its job.
Getting a rocket, orbiter, lander, and rover all together for $150 million is impressive and one hell of an ambitious mission for your first moon landing. I say good job to ISRO and Indian in general on this one. ... and NOBODY has landed on the moon on their first try.
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Surveyor 1 soft-landed on the moon on its first try in 1966:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The Ranger series was never intended to make a soft landing; they transmitted back images of the moon's surface before hard impact, as designed.
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The orbiter was planned to have a one-year mission, but they say that because the orbital acquisition was so precise that it may be in use for up to seven.
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Not at all.. The craft is designed to have the Commander manually control it all the way down to the surface. Armstrong just wanted to land somewhere free of large boulders.
NASA screwed up Apollo 11, got lucky (Score:2)
As I understand it, the Apollo lander computer was intermittently failing because it was running too many tasks due to a chain of other unforeseen events*.
If Armstrong had left the landing up to the computer, it may have failed outright by self-rebooting at a critical time, or functione
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Some of the specifics are arguably incorrect, but I don't see any significant contradictions. Pick your biggest specific complaint and we can explore it further. Summarized complaints are not very useful for problem solving.
I will agree "reboot" is perhaps not the right word. A "task flush" may be a better way to describe it. Either way, the computer is not available during part of the task flush (as I understand it).
Your linked article doesn't go into much detail about the computer problem, saying little m
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I mean yes, to a Space Nutter, dead rocks are more important than what people eat, but still.
As opposed to alive rocks?
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Well, they might run into a Horta [wikipedia.org] up there....
Re: The 1960s called... (Score:2)
What's wrong with the hortas down here?
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The rocks control us (Score:1)
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With that said, our budget for space exploration is hardly a slice of the national budget
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Seriously, nearly 60 years later and still unable to land a probe ?
Doesn't give me much faith - not that I had much to begin with - in Indian engineering !
You're posting on an American website that can't handle unicode.
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Doesn't give me much faith - not that I had much to begin with - in Indian engineering !
You're posting on an American website that can't handle unicode.
And also can't seem to remember your answer about cookies. Is that just me or is everyone getting that?
Good job! It's data! (Score:5, Insightful)
Just don't try and cover up any mistakes - and let everyone else learn and grow, and you'll be the shoulders other giants stand on to look like bigger giants.
Oh, and keep going! Make us jelous, and we'll be glad to keep spurring you on later.
Ryan Fenton
Re:Good job! It's data! (Score:5, Informative)
Just don't try and cover up any mistakes
They already kind of did that when they claimed it landed in one piece. [indiatoday.in]
Well, the government did. (Score:5, Informative)
You don't build a rocket and lander and get them to the moon, when you're being morons that make preliminary claims like that.
It is more likely that they went "Well, according to the program, it should have landed now. We have lost contact though." and some official ran with it and called the press through a "Chinese telephone", so it became "OMG they landed!".
And the scientists went "Here we go again... --.--".
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Let's not turn this into nation bashing. Governments and politicians all over the world spin things. It's human nature to pick or allow leaders who are full of shit.
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They also won't use the word "crash". They prefer "hard landing". I wonder where the dividing line is between the two terms.
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Hard Landing: That is something a person could walk away from.
Crash: All that's left are bits and pieces.
I think that crash is more accurate in this case. Although this was an unmanned mission, the "bits and pieces" description is accurate. I can't give a better definition of the dividing line, but there is no question as to what we have here.
In science, there are no mistakes. (Score:3)
Only learning opportunities.
That is why I always find it bewildering, when people get offended if you point out a problem or even suggest a solution for them.
I rather get angry when people *don't*! (Like letting me run around work ALL day with my fly open. WTF, we have clients at stake!)
The universe is incredibly fascinating. That's also why I don't get how one can prefer some ancient book, even if the teachings were once the forefront of research. Look outside! It's amazing!!
I *like* being the most clueles
Re: In science, there are no mistakes. (Score:2)
"I was trying to get more clients"
"Etc, I just saw our quarterly report"
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Without the launch expense the Vikram mission cost about what an Indian industrialist spent on his daughter's wedding a few years ago. The space program is not the reason for poverty in India.
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Did the industrialist use public funds?
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Building his empire? Yup.
Isn't that landism? (Score:2)
Aren't they crash-shaming that poor poor 1.4 billion minority?
Oh wait! They are actual scientists!
Here's the primary NASA source with more pictures (Score:5, Informative)
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Thanks. This is why I keep coming back to Slashdot.
Spread over such a large area would seem to indicate an explosion of some sort, perhaps unused fuel?
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What crap? What are you talking about?
Why did the lander fail? (Score:2)
The cause of the issue is still unknown. The impact area shows that the lander actually hit the ground, which means it didn't explode...or it didn't explode much.
Is the debris field consistent with a 2km fall?
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Hu? The cause is old news. The 2nd braking burn went a bit too long, and the final burn was therefore off.
https://www.thenewsminute.com/... [thenewsminute.com]
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Which makes no sense. They lost contact at 2.1 km above the surface. How does "hard breaking" lead to a loss of communication/telemetry with the lander 2.1km above the surface?
trial and error (Score:1)
Darn, upgrades (Score:2)
Map makers now have to add a new moonscape feature: "Vikram Crater"