Japan's SLIM Probe Lands On Moon, But Suffers Power Problem (space.com) 17
Geoffrey.landis writes: The Japan SLIM spacecraft has successfully landed on moon, but power problems mean it may be short mission. The good news is that the landing was successful, making Japan only the fifth nation to successfully make a lunar landing, and the ultra-miniature rover and the hopper both deployed. The bad news is that the solar arrays aren't producing power, and unless they can fix the problem in the next few hours, the batteries will be depleted and it will die. But, short mission or long, hurrah for Japan for being the fifth country to successfully land a mission on the surface of the moon (on their third try; two previous missions didn't make it). It's a rather amazing mission. I've never seen a spacecraft concept that lands under rocket power vertically but then rotates over to rest horizontally on the surface.
Upside Down (Score:5, Informative)
Scott Manley has already released a video indicating that it has landed upside down, according to the telemetry data.
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Re:Upside Down (Score:5, Interesting)
Calling him a "youtuber", while technically true, seems unfair. The term encompasses a wide variety of things, usually with not such good connotations. I regard him as a space journalist who happens to be on YouTube. He started out as a "youtuber", but now he's doing the kind of work that the "mainstream media" ought to be doing.
Re:Upside Down (Score:5, Informative)
He did not start out as a youtuber. He's a programmer who has code in https://lame.sourceforge.io/ [sourceforge.io], that has probably influenced every .mp3 you've ever listened to, and he transitioned his love for astrophysics into youtubing as a side project.
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He's the hardest working man on YouTube. Fly safe (also fly correctly oriented).
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or it bounced/rolled and just ended up that way.
The moon seems to be doing very well at jamming probes we send to it. Makes me wonder if people designing and programming these landers are just not being as careful with them as say, a mission to Mars, thinking "it's just the moon, it won't be as big of a problem!"
SPACE is hard. ALL space is hard.
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Makes me wonder if people designing and programming these landers are just not being as careful with them as say, a mission to Mars, thinking "it's just the moon, it won't be as big of a problem!"
Yes, clearly this is the issue. They spend all that time getting their degree, then all that time working on this project, and they're thought is, "Eh, it's only the Moon."
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You have to consider varying degrees of care, and therefore expense. This isn't the 60's, we don't have two superpowers in a dick-measuring contest with unlimited budgets to spend.
The sky's the limit with the stuff they COULD do. But nowadays they get a budget, which is a number mostly drawn out of a hat based on what the funders WANT to spend on the project. Then it's up to the engineers to spend that money as carefully as possible, to get the best results possible. The funders are likely given a botto
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"Eh, it's only the Moon."
Relax. It's open till 9.
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The space agencies have been infiltrated by Lunar agents to keep out the illegal iiimigrants.
The agencies are being run by lunatics
"tin foil hat off"
Re: Upside Down (Score:1)
Touche!
mod up
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Probably not landed upside down. They were trying to land on a slope, and part of the plan was to tip a bit after touchdown, and then end up more or less right way up. In their press conference they said that it probably landed and tipped as expected, but tipped too much and fell over.
It's possible that in a couple of weeks when the sun is in a different position relative to the moon, light might catch the panels and they may be able to get some more out of the system.
They also have two very small rovers th