January 3, 2019
The Chang'e-4 lunar probe lands on the far side of the moon.
"It's an important milestone for China's space exploration," said Wu Weiren, designer of the program, quoted in Reuters.
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The moon is old hat.
The Kuiper belt is where it's at.
The name of the Chinese landing craft is Pink Floyd.
We'll have to take their word for it.
Did Ann edit this post to add the correct name of the lunar probe?
Every time I see a story about this, my mind sings "I'll see you on the dark side of the moon." At least it's a good ear worm for a change.
Wait a minute --
The moon is tidally locked to Earth, rotating at the same rate as it orbits our planet, so most of the far side - or "dark side" - is never visible to us. Previous spacecraft have seen the far side, but none has landed on it.
So, they can't show us pictures of it because it's dark over there?
We'll have to take their word for it.
Nowhere in that Reuters story do they mention that a second part of the probe remained in orbit in order to transmit those images "from the far side of the moon," from which you cannot transmit signals to Earth from the surface. So with no relay in orbit . . . ?
Image a Chinese youtube video of the event, and the whole time the screen would be black. Sure.
Note that they deem it to be an important milestone for the Chinese space program, not for humanity as a whole. None of this: “We came in peace for all mankind.”
The pictures are from Mongolia. Fake News.
Now we’ll need a moon wall.
Apple helped them fake it. That's why their earnings are down.
Seriously, the lunar probe is not named The Pink Floyd as that would be a copyright law violation and China respects Western IP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOpaI-wmN7w
The moon is tidally locked to the earth, so we always see the same side. If our side is unlit, the "darkside" is in full sunlight.
AllenS said...
Wait a minute --
The moon is tidally locked to Earth, rotating at the same rate as it orbits our planet, so most of the far side - or "dark side" - is never visible to us. Previous spacecraft have seen the far side, but none has landed on it.
So, they can't show us pictures of it because it's dark over there?
There's no such thing as a permanently dark side of the moon. The side that faces away from the Earth has the same day-night cycles as the side we see. The daylight lasts for two weeks and so does the night.
China previously landed a rover on the near side and operated it for months. It takes good engineering to design something that can survive two weeks of darkness where the temperature drops to more than 200 degrees below zero. China has done that, as the Soviets did in the 1970s. The big difference with this current mission is that it's landing somewhere no one has landed before (and there's no rover on this one). To communicate with it, China placed a relay satellite at the L2 point.
Picture and more details.
The Chinese are having anal sex with the moon.
Larry J, the italics in my post was a quote from Reuters. Take it up with them.
What about the Hop'e-4 lunar probe?
I bet they’re going to build a naval base on the moon.
If our side is unlit, the “darkside” is in full sunlight.
Note that the next “our side is unlit” situation — that is, New Moon, so-called — occurs January 6. At that point the entire lunar far side will be “full” — at least as seen by the Chinese probe — along with NASA/NOAA's DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory) probe, stationed approximately 1 million miles sunward from Earth.
Is that anywhere near the secret Nazi moon base?
Here is what the “full” lunar far side looks like, as seen by DSCOVR (back in 2016 in this case).
AllenS said...
Larry J, the italics in my post was a quote from Reuters. Take it up with them.
Reporters are notoriously uninformed about science. Well, to be fair, they're uninformed about damned near everything. Back in the 1920s, the New York Times wrote an editorial criticizing Robert Goddard (inventor of the first liquid-fueled rocket and a physics professor). They claimed it was impossible for a rocket to function in a vacuum because there was nothing for it to push against. They finally wrote a retraction in 1969 as Apollo 11 was landing on the moon. If you're looking for intelligent information about science, a newspaper isn't a very good place to start.
This is why we need space marines to cleanse the moon of lunar commies. Trump's space force plans look even wiser in hindsight.
What year did you join the Marines, President Pant-Load?
This is why we need space marines
He who controls the orbitals controls the planet. If we don't take control, someone else will.
What we need is a spaceplane capable of shooting down satellites and dropping KEWs. We could probably deploy one using existing technology. Take the Dreamchaser or the X-37. add a railgun and a KEW dispenser, put it on top of a Falcon-9 booster and you have a cheap, reusable spaceplane. Deploy 3 or 4, and we no longer need our nuclear triad which would save millions each year, and be good PR. (First to use them, first to get rid of them)
Guys, there's a reason why the reporter put "dark side" in quotes. Those are air quotes.
The more things Chang'e, the more they stay the same.
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