1y ago

Japan’s moon landing picture might be the space photo of the decade

mashable.com

Japan’s moon landing picture might be the space photo of the decade::undefined

Astronomy @mander.xyz

Blaze @discuss.tchncs.de

1y ago

Japan’s moon landing picture might be the space photo of the decade

mashable.com /article/japan-moon-landing-recent-images

[Dormant] moved to !space@mander.xyz @lemmy.world

ooli @lemmy.world

1y ago

Japan’s moon landing picture might be the space photo of the decade

mashable.com /article/japan-moon-landing-recent-images

24 comments

Then again, it might NOT be the space photo of the decade.
- So you're saying it's a 50/50 chance, eh?
- Let's hope the best pictures come from Artemis later this decade.
- 🫨
The company [that helped build the rover] is perhaps most famous for originally creating the Transformers, the alien robots that can disguise themselves as machines
So, Transformers on moon confirmed.
- I'm surprised they didn't blame the crash on the Decepticons!
  ... actually it was caused by one of the engines falling off! (or the nossle anyway)
  
  Doh! Well, at least next time they'll know they should design it so that the engines don't fall off. Maybe add some tape and push it harder against the frame for a few seconds so it knows it's meant to remain there.
Furthermore, there are no GPS systems on the moon to help guide a craft to its landing spot.
The fact that this line is in the article just reminds me how ~~dumb~~ tech illiterate most people are.
- I'm willing to let that one pass just because it's something people have gotten so used to here that it's likely taken for granted by many. I'm guessing that line got far more, "oh right, duh" reactions than, "wait what!?" ones.
- I personally think this should be one of our priorities while planning a permanent base. If we start with a constellation of gps/communications satellites, it will make everything else so much easier.
- This is very much the bell curve meme, but those in the know would be aware that the US military had been working on it for a while now.
  https://www.nga.mil/news/NGA_Leads_Development_of_Navigational_Reference_Sy.html
Kids these days not playing enough Lunar Lander
Ah, I can see Toy Poodle from this angle!
You can tell it's real because
Heh I love the photo artifacts. It's like holograms on a fake ID
So at this point, we've been there in person. We fully understand the atmosphere, the gravity, and the topology. We have laser range finding, lidar, stereoscopic vision. Trajectory and velocity are both more or less solved problems by this point, right?... Right? There's only 2.7 seconds of light delay. How have we screwed up so many landings?
- ... because it's literally rocket science?
  
  I'm not saying it's easy, or that I could do better, but multi national attempts, how many billions of dollars, surely we have to have enough tech to do this with proper fail safes by now.
- Just play Kerbal Space Program for a day and you will understand.
  
  I've played Kerbal. I'm also not a team of astrophysicists and rocket scientists on a multi billion dollar contract.
- Because of the "more or less" part of your post. Oversimplifying things is nice for a quick explanation, but physics don't care about your simplified model once you get up there, gravity isn't completely uniform, random space stuff sends you slightly off your path, and your target move in a mostly (but not 100%) predictable way, around your planet.
  
  I am fully down to learn.
  I wasn't aware the gravity on the moon wasn't mostly uniform. I've not heard that before. Any particular reason image processing couldn't be used to keep the down side down? Or when the previous lander crashed thinking it was many KM higher but it didn't have backups for each sensor type? I've been following along and many of these seem to be preventable issues when it comes to the price of a launch.
  For that matter, light delay to manually change system parameters seems to be reasonable.

24 comments