India Becomes the First Country To Land Spacecraft on Moon's South Pole 111
India has become the first country to land a spacecraft on the moon's south pole. It launched Chandrayaan-3 in mid-July, with the spacecraft entering the moon's orbit on Aug. 5. Earlier this week, Russia crashed its Luna-25 rocket in the same lunar region. From a report: It's notoriously difficult to land a rover on the moon. Russia's Luna-25 crashed while making an attempt just this week, while Japanese company ispace failed to land an unmanned lander in April.â 1 Since the moon has no atmosphere, landers can't just softly touch down on the lunar surface. And, without GPS capabilities, scientists rely on the lander's computers to accurately identify where the spacecraft will touch down. India is only the fourth country to pull off a moon landing, behind the U.S., China, and Russia. The nation's lunar aspirations are part of a push by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to garner investments for private space exploration and satellite launches. Speaking at the rocket's launch in July, Modi heralded a "new chapter" in India's space program.
Cheaper than Interstellar (Score:5, Interesting)
Russia? (Score:4, Informative)
Russia have never landed successfully on the moon. The USSR did, with a lot of kazakhs, ukrainians and others working on the program.
Russia on their own have only managed to crash into the moon.
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Ad the people who defeated Germany were largely Kazakh and Ukrainian. Russia loves to take credit for people they murdered.
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Ukrainians - 15%
Kazakhs - 2%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Russia? (Score:5, Informative)
The article you linked claims that the specific numbers are highly disputed, with Russian historians downplaying the contributions of other republics - and the table you cited comes from a Russian historian. Yet even the table you cite only defends your point if you cite only military dead, and not total, as it shows 16,3% of the total Ukrainian population dead vs. 12,7% for Russia. The table you cite lists 1,65m military dead for Ukraine 6,85m total dead, yet some Ukrainian historians put the military dead alone was over 7m. Snyder (one of the most prominent living WWII historians) argues that more Ukrainians were killed in WWII than Russians - total, not as a percentage - despite Ukraine having a much lower population.
Ukrainians and Belarussians did most of the dying because that's where the fighting primarily was, as well as being the area under Nazi occupation the longest. Under Generalplan Ost [wikipedia.org], Germany planned to depopulate Ukraine 65% and Belarus 75%. The original plan involved deportation to Siberia, but gradually evolved into starvation, then ultimately to deportation to slave labour and extermination camps (with a lot of just plain shooting). Several million were starved in camps during the occupation (many German collaborators chose to collaborate to escape their fate in the camps), with German soldiers told to steel themselves against seeing starving Ukrainians because every bit of food they received was, they were told, food that would not feed hungry German families.
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some Ukrainian historians
Some Ukrainian historians say the Ukrainians existed already when Herodotus lived. Or it was the Ukrainians who dug up the Black Sea and some other ridiculous theories.
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Right. Take Russian historians at face value, even when disputed, and ignore all other historians, including non-Ukrainian historians.
That makes you very credible.
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The finale. Russia has never successfully landed on the moon.
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I know a lot Ukrainians, and they dispute those numbers very angrily. Perhaps Russian "historians" citing "facts" from the Soviet era are not the best source of information?
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15% is very probable. It wasthe percentage of Ukrainians in the USSR
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I actually misspoke, meant to say I know a lot of Kazakhs. And not, Russia didn't send people proportionally, they sent non-Russians.
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didn't send people proportionally
And you know this how?
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Because that's what everyone outside Russia claims.
Why are you shilling for them?
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You know that in Russia 9/10 of all males born in 1921-23 died in the war? Because they were conscripts when the war started in 1941. Look at the population pyramid of Russia. It reflects that massive loss of population in 1941-45. You can see waves in it. Because children of the people died in the war were not born. Then grandchildren of those not born children were not born and so on. Therefore every 25 years there is a drop in the number of children born. My both Russian grandf
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And why to you "WANT" to believe Russia, with its long history of lying about its history?
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Sure, dude, and you're not, as you ask me to go ask random Russian people for their anecdotes.
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I would advise you to read official soviet statistic but you would not believe it because "Russia bad". You better would believe someone who read some rumors and conspiracy theories on
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Per the table "Deaths by Soviet republic", "Military Dead" column
Total USSR 10,700,000
Ukrainian SSR 1,650,000
which means 15% for Ukraine
Also, see column "Deaths as % 1940 Pop" in the same table. It is 16% for Ukraine (civilians + military). Where did you get 21%?
Also Byelorussians and Poles and others.. (Score:2)
There were also Byelorussians and Poles... at least half a million of soldiers on the Eastern front...
and other nations too...
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Russia have never landed successfully on the moon. The USSR did, with a lot of kazakhs, ukrainians and others working on the program.
Russia never invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 too. Stop blaming Russia for that
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I thought Poland did it.
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You do understand that individual SSRs free agency was only on paper and achieving success in the USSR required "Russification" of culture and language, right? Even Stalin, who was a Georgian, was out there giving toasts like this [msu.edu].
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So Ukrainians stop being Ukrainians because they don't have freedom, is that your argument?
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It makes the achievements of the US lab dependent on the contributions of Chinese and Russian people, which is exactly the point being made.
Furthermore, to correct your analogy, the lab in this case would commonly also be in China or Russia, just owned by Americans.
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Yes, this is an excellent point. You agree then that successes such as space missions are best regarded as achievements by all of humanity.
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Furthermore, to correct your analogy, the lab in this case would commonly also be in China or Russia, just owned by Americans.
Really? Correct analogy? Ukraine SSR had "laboratories" in Russia owned by Ukraine???
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Watch this video by Ukrainian youtuber Paper Skies on why Russian missile have a tendency to target Ukrainian outhouses and the linage of Soviet video guided missile https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] . Basically the first video guided missile needs contrasting color for target lock and the first demonstration run for the higher brass ended hilariously when it hits the runway in front of a hanger instead of the target inside the hanger because the base commander thought to improve on the pilot's request to
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There is not much a point to shame Russia for the failed moon landing. These things are incredibly difficult and failure rate is high among all countries that have a space agency. All of NASA, ESA, or China, failed landings, see these lists for the failed Mars missions https://www.popularmechanics.c... [popularmechanics.com] https://www.astronomy.com/scie... [astronomy.com]
The political troll part should not be on the failure of the landing itself, but on the intent of even trying one right now: the Russian management being incompetent for conti
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Yevgeny Prigozhin is "dead" in a "plane crash" soon after Chandrayaan-3 landed on the moon. Might be a coincidence but who knows? A failed mutiny, then a failed Luna-25 mission and now this.
Re: Russia? (Score:2)
Itâ(TM)d be interesting to run your comment through chatGPT, adding the word âoeconspiraciesâoe. It might be entertaining.
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I'd like to agree, but remember they have landed on Venus. Hold your jokes, some respect is due here. But not much :)
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imperialist nazi Ukrainian hospital attacked and massacred peace-loving Russian lander!
This why special military operation with wooden tanks!
Correction: Not Russia (Score:5, Informative)
Correction: Russian has never landed on the moon - only the USSR has.
Re:Correction: Not Russia (Score:5, Interesting)
Even then... The USSR was really the Russian Empire, and wasn't most of their space program Ukrainian?
Culture matters, it affects what people are inclined to learn and what they are inclined to do with that education. Russian culture has issues producing, but not so many issues with conquering and having others produce for them.
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and wasn't most of their space program Ukrainian?
It wasn't of course
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A pretty big chunk of it was Ukrainian, though I wouldn't say "primarily". The famous Korolev, father of astronautics, was Ukrainian. Yuzhnoye Design Bureau, the main engine developer and producer, was in Dnipro. Antonov Aerospace Design Bureau, which produced both spacecraft components and the transport aircraft for spacecraft, is famously Ukrainian. Etc.
And yes, other SSRs played important roles too. For example, the primary launch site was in Kazakhstan (Baikonur). Russia only just recently completed
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Did Korolev identified as Ukrainian - who knows. His mother was a teacher of Russian language. His ethnicity in his documents was Russian. He was born in the cou
Re:Correction: Not Russia (Score:5, Informative)
The fact that you don't understand the difference between "not having freedom" and "people existing and achieving things" is honestly staggering. [slashdot.org]
In the late 1920s and 1930s, proudly declaring yourself Ukrainian in any way that might even slightly smell of nationalism would be a great way to become murdered by the state. Seriously, do you have no conception of the history of the area you're talking about?
You mean his half-Russian father. Who left when he was three. And seriously, "his father taught a language that Russia had been forceably trying to make Ukrainians use, having banned the use of Ukrainian in schools" is your argument?
Yes, because that's what they did, throughout the Russian empire, the USSR, and after, trying to declare as many people to be "Russian" as possible, for any reason they could and forceably Russify them. I once met a Crimean Tatar, who said that the worst day of her life was when the Russians declared her to be "Russian", which meant that she had to leave her school, her friends, and all her lessons had to be taught in Russian from then on (and there was zero tolerance for dissent). Even in places where they didn't outright declare you to be Russian, and even in the periods where there weren't heavy active repressions, there was always heavy pressure on people to russify. Want a good job? Want a good career? You better speak Russian and behave like a Russian. Often on paper this wasn't the case, but it's how it played out in practice.
No, the country he was born in was named the Russian Empire, an "empire" being a prison of nations, an engulfer of other peoples who forces them to be part of it by violence and repression.
The entire history of Ukraine after the Kyivan Rus is one of people striving for independence against one oppressor after the next, occasionally briefly gaining it, before being ruthlessly crushed by one oppressor or the next.
Lenin himself gave up Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia under the Treaty of Brest-Livosk. Only to reneg on the treaty and reconquer them in the subsequent years - against a huge amount of fighting in Ukraine against both the Red and White armies to remain independent. Even with the formation of the USSR, Lenin was extremely focused on playing lip service to the notion that the individual SSRs were "independent" (even though it was only on paper). And welcomed and even encouraged in the early years the SSRs having their own languages and cultures. It was a key part of early communist ideology, that the world was to become one communist "state", with all peoples despite their diversity living and cooperating in harmony. The problem is that as soon as Ukrainians were given "Ukrainizatsia", where Ukrainian language and culture were no longer repressed, they again began agitating for more independence and autonomy, which led to extremely severe repressions starting in the late 1920s.
And this is the era in which Korolev lived. You have to understand the history of the time.
So, Korolev isn't enough of a contribution? Okay, let's go over other important figures in the Soviet space program.
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In the late 1920s and 1930s, proudly declaring yourself Ukrainian in any way that might even slightly smell of nationalism would be a great way to become murdered by the state. Seriously, do you have no conception of the history of the area you're talking about?
Bullshit. You are making things up and outright lying.There were tens of million of people who identified as Ukrainian in the USSR. And in the census of 1926 in the USSR 31,194,976 people identified as Ukrainian. Nobody killed you for identifying as Ukrainian. Even Brezhnev (head of the USSR 1964-1982) had "Ukrainian" in his passport and he was born in 1906 same as Korolev. You just went to office and told the clerk your ethnicity and he wrote it down in passport. Nobody cared. It was a different thing if
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Nice omission of words: "proudly" and "smell[ed] of nationalism". There was a big difference between having your ethnicity listed as Ukrainian in your documents, vs. making public statements. At the height of the repressions, the USSR was killing up t
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Lenin himself gave up Ukraine
He was forced to gave up Ukraine by Germany during the WWI.
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And?
There was no treaty that "revoked Ukraine's independence". It's certainly not in the Treaty of Versailles.
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Yes, because that's what they did, throughout the Russian empire, the USSR, and after,
Maybe you forgot, but I told you that Korolev had Russian ethnicity in his ID documents. In the USSR every one had his ethnicity written down in his ID document (which you declared yourself when you got the passport). But you said "and after". In the post-USSR Russia, your ethnicity is not written anywhere. You do not have it in your passport anymore
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Aside from Korolev being born to Russian parents in Ukraine I don't know if any other major figures were "Ukrainian".
Re:Correction: Not Russia (Score:4, Informative)
Korolev's father was half-Russian, half-Belarusian, and grew up in Belarus. His mother was Ukrainian, from Nizhyn (Chernihiv Oblast). Her ancestry was Ukrainian, Greek and Polish. His father, the only one with (half) Russian ancestry, left when he was three years old. He grew up being raised by his mother's parents - his grandmother being the daughter of a Ukrainian cossack.
Not even remotely surprising that Russian rewrote him to be "Russian" because he has one Russian grandfather, even though neither of his parents are from Russia and he's from Ukraine. It's a perfect example of how Russia tries to erase the history of other peoples in their empires or "unions".
I asked ChatGPT to name the most important figures in the Soviet Space Program. #2 on its list was Valentin Glushko? Guess what? He's from Odesa. His ancestry is a mix of Ukrainian cossacks and Russian peasant immigrants.
Number three on its list? Vladimir Chelomey. He was born in Poland (to a Ukrainian family), but grew up in Ukraine. Poltava, specifically, then moved to Kyiv, where he attended Kyiv Polytechnic.
This is how colonialism works: you eliminate the contributions of the people you've conquered and pin them all on your own greatness, while trying to eliminate the cultural identities of your conquered peoples.
Congrats (Score:5, Interesting)
Congratulations where it's due.
Re:Congrats (Score:5, Insightful)
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In case anyone missed it, here is a stream: https://youtu.be/jsWCCGjRWyM [youtu.be]
There may be others, but this is where I watched it live.
Not really the south pole (Score:3)
They are about 20 degrees north of the South Pole (landed 69 degrees S). I get that Earth comm link will be a bit harder and will face black out days (maybe ask China if they can relaly off Queqiao), but why didn't they land closer to Shackleton crater? That's bound to have ice and cool stuff (literally).
Re:Not really the south pole (Score:5, Informative)
They are communicating via NASA/JPLs Deep Space Network.
As of right this moment, the comms are going via DSN's Spain station.
https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.... [nasa.gov]
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That's a really cool link. Thanks. It's also good "feels" to know that there's a little bit of international cooperation involved.
Does the Indian space agency have its own coms and use DSN as a backup, or is it some kind of leasing agreement to supply all coms?
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They are about 20 degrees north of the South Pole (landed 69 degrees S). I get that Earth comm link will be a bit harder and will face black out days (maybe ask China if they can relaly off Queqiao), but why didn't they land closer to Shackleton crater? That's bound to have ice and cool stuff (literally).
The lunar surface is not flat. The closer you get to the pole, the more of the landing terrain is obscured in very dark shadow.
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When someone decided to build up a relay network around lunar orbit (it'll be necessary if anyone is serious about permanent base there), that will lessen the issue.
Man (Score:5, Insightful)
It still blows my mind that the U.S. put an actual human up there > 50 years ago.
Re:Mind blowing (Score:4, Interesting)
Honestly... I remember what technology was like when I was a kid (which was years after the first manned Moon landing), and as an adult I have a much better grasp of the limitations.
Sealing up a metal can so it can keep people alive in space for a few days... well within the capabilities. I remain astounded that we got that can safely into space, then enroute to the Moon, put it into orbit around the Moon, and then had a second bit of it break off and land people on the Moon, then they exited that module and walked around before reversing that process and ultimately being safely back on Earth.
Today the math is easy enough for our computers that we have a game called KSP with fairly realistic approximations and you can try it yourself on 'easy mode'. But in 69? And given the consequences of failure, ships docking and separating safely in space, or an astronaut exiting via an airlock... and doing that on the surface of the Moon with razor-sharp dust everywhere getting into your seals and gaskets? Still amazing even now.
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And they did it several times in a row!
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It still blows my mind that the U.S. put an actual human up there > 50 years ago.
If it helps, look at some of the engineering wonders *in operation* in the 60's on ICBMs. Mt fav is [Polaris 1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UGM-27_Polaris) that saw *deployment* by 1962! Optically-driven guidance!
That all said, what is a tragedy is the quantity of wealth consumed by the MIC in this process -- all for MAD policies. Just as Eisenhower foresaw -- and here wewre are today where this MIC waste has grown to grotesque proportions.
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There's a scene in the first Superman where he is trying to divert a hijacked ICBM, so flies in front of it to catch it. It routes around him.
For some reason this has been removed from any broadcast I've seen since the original theater. It could be to shorten it for commercials and length, but seemed pretty cool and surely they could find a better 8 seconds to chop out.
Re: Man (Score:2)
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Russia's space rockets are basically the same ICBMs from the 60s.
What you are talking about. Soyuz has over 1,900 flights and was commissioned for all kinds of launches until up to the war in Ukraine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Except for the entire Gemini program, which used Atlas ICBMs as boosters?
Only when the Apollo program came about did the mass requirement outstrip what ICBMs were designed to throw downrange, and ICBMs started getting smaller due to shrinking warhead designs. But in the early 60s, a thermonuclear warhead weighed tons due to not having figured out how to convert Lithium-6 Deuteride into a shitload of Tritium atoms being squeezed together right between your expanding fission fireball and a super dense tungst
Didn't let politicians demand landing in the dark (Score:5, Informative)
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The problem with authoritarian nations is that eventually the imperial leader surrounds himself with yes men rather than knowledgeable advisors who will tell him what he doesn't want to hear.
While there is some concern about Modi's fascist leanings, a failure has opened him up to accepting outside guidance. Couple that with the slow and steady although low budgeted program, India's overall mission with Chandrayann 3 was a success as opposed to the Luna-25 crater.
I am a firm fan of Team Space. I wanted Rus
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(...)The Russian probe literally landed in the dark(...)
This is not correct. The Russian probe has never tried to land in the dark (never got the chance to). The problem occurred when moving to a lower orbit, the engine simply worked for much longer than expected and the new trajectory led the probe directly into the ground.
Russia never succeeded... it was USSR (Score:2)
Russia never succeeded - all landings were USSR - so together with Ukraine and others.
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Apollo also had international contributions.
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I'm pretty sure the US taxpayers who paid billions of 1960s dollars to buy the gear they used may have had something to do with it.
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south pole fauna (Score:2)
Re: south pole fauna (Score:2)
Nice. But truthfully, I was hoping for something with a Morgan Freeman voiceover.
Landing in 3 2 1 (Score:2)
without GPS capabilities, scientists rely on the lander's computers to accurately identify where the spacecraft will touch down.
Given modern LIDAR and visual recognition systems should this really be that hard? Might be able to run it using a Rasoberry PI.
Congratulations (Score:2)
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Quora was offline during the first attempt.
Paywall (Score:2)
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But others might differ.
The moon is BRICS territory now. (Score:1)
Wonder when the US will bother flying back to the Moon.
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The US is currently hanging out 'near' the Moon. Maybe you've never heard of the James Web Telescope?
Imagine it....10+ billion US dollars sitting a million miles away from Earth, just lollygagging in L2 lunar orbit. That has to burn a hole in Vladof Putlers UnderRoos.
The irrelevancy must be absolutely debilitating, right up until Potato-Head steps on his multi-million dollar yacht. Then he drinks the pain away, I'm sure.
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btw that's 950,010,000,000.00 rubles. Fuck face. :)
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An overpriced telescope doesn't mean much compared to actual landings on the object and ability to set up a base there. Obviously, you have not read, "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress", to see why having the ultimate high ground is a useful thing. Even North Korea is sending stuff to the moon.
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JWST overpriced? Maybe, but you can say that about almost anything today. We learned actual new things from this. Idk what a probe on the Moon is going to learn other than practice for the real thing.
Besides, the US has already had actual people on the moon. Multiple times. They also have had rovers on Mars for decades. Mars being MUCH harder to land on than the moon. They have nothing to prove. If they want back in the game, it can happen as fast as they want.
on the pole! (Score:2)
They landed it right on the pole! Amazing. On the pole. Not near it, on it! Wow.
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so credit goes to mission navigator Vlad the Impaler? :)
hawk
Spam calls (Score:1)
Not the south pole (Score:1)
why is is it so hard? (Score:2)
On "the dark side", according to The Times ! (Score:2)
Now it's as shit with facts as The Register.
"India lands on dark side of the moon"
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/india-moon-landing-mission-chandrayaan-3-2023-d3pz9l2lr
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It always has a dark side, so maybe technically correct. Just not always the same side.
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wut (Score:2)
Really makes you wonder how Apollo 11 did it.
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...and yet no one has send a human being and black for decades
That's racist! /s