Photo Shows Japan's Moon Lander Arrived Upside-Down (mashable.com) 22
"A photo of Japan's robotic moon lander shows that though the spacecraft did make the quarter-million-mile journey to the lunar surface, it landed upside down..." reports Mashable.
Because of the lander's now-apparent inverted position, its solar panels weren't oriented correctly to generate power, according to the space agency. The team elected to conserve power by shutting down the spacecraft about 2.5 hours after landing.
What's perhaps as surprising as the photo of the lander is how it was taken. Two small rovers separated from the crewless mothership just prior to touchdown. It was one of these baseball-sized robots that was able to snap the image of the spacecraft with its head in the moondust. The rover, built with the help of Japanese toy maker Takara Tomy, is a sphere that splits in half to expose a pair of cameras that point front and back. The two hemispheres also become the rover wheels. "The company is perhaps most famous for originally creating the Transformers, the alien robots that can disguise themselves as machines," said Elizabeth Tasker, who provided commentary on the moon landing in English on Jan. 20.
The space agency still isn't entirely sure what went wrong. At about 55 yards above the ground, the spacecraft performed an obstacle avoidance maneuver, part of the pinpoint-landing demonstration. Just prior to this step, one of the two main engines stopped thrusting, throwing the lander's orientation off. JAXA is continuing to investigate what caused the engine problem... Despite the fact that the spacecraft is now sleeping, the SLIM team hasn't lost hope for a recovery. With solar panels facing west, the lander still has a chance of catching some rays and generating power. If the angle of sunlight changes, SLIM could still be awakened, mission officials said.
That would have to happen soon, though. Night will fall on the moon on Feb. 1, bringing about freezing temperatures. The spacecraft was not built to withstand those conditions.
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft has now passed over the landing site at an altitude of about 50 miles (80 km) — and snapped their own photograph which they say shows "the slight change in reflectance around the lander due to engine exhaust sweeping the surface."
What's perhaps as surprising as the photo of the lander is how it was taken. Two small rovers separated from the crewless mothership just prior to touchdown. It was one of these baseball-sized robots that was able to snap the image of the spacecraft with its head in the moondust. The rover, built with the help of Japanese toy maker Takara Tomy, is a sphere that splits in half to expose a pair of cameras that point front and back. The two hemispheres also become the rover wheels. "The company is perhaps most famous for originally creating the Transformers, the alien robots that can disguise themselves as machines," said Elizabeth Tasker, who provided commentary on the moon landing in English on Jan. 20.
The space agency still isn't entirely sure what went wrong. At about 55 yards above the ground, the spacecraft performed an obstacle avoidance maneuver, part of the pinpoint-landing demonstration. Just prior to this step, one of the two main engines stopped thrusting, throwing the lander's orientation off. JAXA is continuing to investigate what caused the engine problem... Despite the fact that the spacecraft is now sleeping, the SLIM team hasn't lost hope for a recovery. With solar panels facing west, the lander still has a chance of catching some rays and generating power. If the angle of sunlight changes, SLIM could still be awakened, mission officials said.
That would have to happen soon, though. Night will fall on the moon on Feb. 1, bringing about freezing temperatures. The spacecraft was not built to withstand those conditions.
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft has now passed over the landing site at an altitude of about 50 miles (80 km) — and snapped their own photograph which they say shows "the slight change in reflectance around the lander due to engine exhaust sweeping the surface."
Identified root cause (Score:5, Funny)
They never should have outsourced that probe design to Australia. Now look what happened.
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I knew there was a good joke in there, thanks!
Now wait for the Flamebait mods to roll in.
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I MEANT ON THE OP!!!
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I'm really surprised. I would have thought that a "Goddamn Megatron!" kind of joke would be more obvious...?
Re:Identified root cause (Score:5, Informative)
It was actually supposed to tip over a bit, but then go back the other way and end up perpendicular to the slope.
Unfortunately it lost one of the nozzles on one of two engines. It's the second time that has happened to a Japanese spacecraft. That meant it lost some attitude control, but the software was able to cope with that. That alone is incredible, other probes that suffered the loss of some control or a sensor have usually not been able to recover and continue the mission automatically.
Overall the mission was a huge success. It landed in the target zone with great precision. Remember that there is no GPS on the moon. Instead it used cameras to look at the landscape and compare it to simulations based on topographic data and the position of the sun. By visually confirming position it was able to navigate to the target area.
What's more, when it got to that area, it was able to select a spot where there were no major obstacles like boulders, and then land on it. All by itself, ground control was just monitoring.
Surface operations were a bonus, and it looks like it will be able to do some useful science. The two rovers deployed correctly too, as it hovered at 5m, on one engine.
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ÇÉÇÉ¥ ÇÇs oÊ ÆfuáÉ¥Êou 'ÆfuolÉ ÇÊOEoW
Pfft. (Score:1, Informative)
Diaclone, you animal.
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I was disappointed that Lego didn't compete for the US lunar lander contract, it would have gotten tons of attention from the kids and gotten some of them interested in STEM.
Not upside down (Score:5, Informative)
If you look at artists' impressions of how it was supposed to be oriented, it's actually on its side, not upside down.
See for example https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/sci... [bbc.co.uk]
Re: Not upside down (Score:5, Funny)
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Perhaps next design Hasbro could help bring their famous weeble tech so the rovers have a better chance of ending upright.
You jest, but ... that's brilliant!
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You joke, but I wonder if that might actually not be the worst idea; an egg-shaped shell with a low CoG would always end up upright so long as it wasn't wedged against something.
You could just have it wait until it stops wobbling before deploying any mission hardware. The shell itself could unfold and serve as stabilizing legs and solar panels so you're not really wasting much mass by playing around with the lander shape.
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The Simp^H^H^H^H NASA already designed a lander like that for the Mars Lander/Rover project. It is a tetrahedron that landed using balloons, then determined which face was on the ground. If it was the bottom, the other panels opened normally. If it was one of the sides, that panel opened first, rotating the lander onto its base, then the other panels opened.
https://mars.nasa.gov/mer/miss... [nasa.gov]
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From the wording of the initial reports, I thought they meant it had landed the right way up, but with its solar panels pointed away from the light. Being "updisde-down" or "on it's side" sounds far worse.
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If we define the engines as pointing backwards, then it was supposed to land on its side (with the solar panels on the opposite side, pointing up). However instead it seems to have landed with the nose pointing down into the ground.
Mun or bust (Score:2)
They have recreated the KSP menu background. Well done JAXA.
Is it really upside down? (Score:3)
Let's be honest, anything written in Kanji looks upside down to me, too.
Cool "whiffle ball" rover (Score:3)
The "ball" rover is a really cool rover. [youtube.com]
I can't judge the engineering practicality of such, but it's a marvel in design regardless.
(And why do all female Japanese announcers sound like 13 year-old girls?)
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Great link, thank you! I really appreciate this kind of engineering - it's mechanically simple, stripped down to very few moving parts, but makes the absolute most of each one. The wobbling wheels are a clever way to dig out of soft terrain. Being so small, I would hope more lander missions can bring a couple of these along. They probably don't have great range, but I think they'll be invaluable for inspecting the main lander, and running over to get a close-up of some glint spotted in the main camera.
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Thanks. The JAXA page called them LEV-1 and 2 but a search didn't come up with much (I didn't notice the nickname). I did notice that the toy company that did Transformers toys helped design it.
Ask Elon to flip it over (Score:2)
He'll be on the moon, 40 years ahead of NASA's 2065 moonlanding, so that might be a friendly gesture to the nation of Japan.