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

gaifux , 5 months ago

You can tell it's real because

gaifux , 5 months ago

Heh I love the photo artifacts. It's like holograms on a fake ID

linearchaos , 5 months ago

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?

nxdefiant , 5 months ago

... because it's literally rocket science?

linearchaos , 5 months ago

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.

nxdefiant , 5 months ago

I can't find much detailing what went wrong, but the main points seem to be that they achieve most accurate landing ever, and were still able to deploy the baseball robot things, which sounds like a win to me.

https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/c5851d0/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2552x1914+0+0/resize/880x660!/quality/90/?url=https:%2F%2Fmedia.npr.org%2Fassets%2Fimg%2F2024%2F01%2F18%2Ftransformer-moon-robot-jaxa-ddeed64a642e82140d690f646e57e47543ee315a.jpg

linearchaos , 5 months ago

Wasn't aware of that, makes sense, def sounds like a win

cley_faye , 5 months ago

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.

linearchaos , 5 months ago

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.

TopRamenBinLaden , 5 months ago

Just play Kerbal Space Program for a day and you will understand.

linearchaos , 5 months ago

I've played Kerbal. I'm also not a team of astrophysicists and rocket scientists on a multi billion dollar contract.

wewbull , 5 months ago

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.

macaroni1556 , 5 months ago

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

Buddahriffic , 5 months ago

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.

AA5B , 5 months ago

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.

ragica , 5 months ago

Kids these days not playing enough Lunar Lander

MeekerThanBeaker , 5 months ago

Then again, it might NOT be the space photo of the decade.

steal_your_face , 5 months ago

🫨

jwt , 5 months ago

So you're saying it's a 50/50 chance, eh?

Argonne , 5 months ago

Let's hope the best pictures come from Artemis later this decade.

JizzmasterD , 5 months ago

Ah, I can see Toy Poodle from this angle!

rikudou , 5 months ago

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.

Nighed , 5 months ago

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)

Buddahriffic , 5 months ago

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.

TK420 , 5 months ago

Starscream still seems to be learning how to fly /s