#WENCHANG, #China – China on Friday, May 3, launched an uncrewed spacecraft on a nearly two-month mission to retrieve rocks and soil from the far side of #TheMoon, the first country to make such an ambitious attempt.
Granted, according to the article I just linked, there were issues. The system that was meant to determine if the lander was right side up or not failed and they had to improvise an alternative. It might have worked, but as of the posting of said article, they aren’t sure if the lander landed on it’s feet or fell over onto its side or what.
We’ll find out soon enough. Here’s hoping we get good news. Also, here’s hoping we get pictures. It’s been a long time since we’ve had new pictures from the moon. The last US lander was in 1972, but there have been others since then. Other countries have had more recent successes. I think India sent the last lander to land near the South pole. They were 600 kilometers away and this new one is shooting for about 300 kilometers away.
#Japan has pulled off one of the hardest tricks in space exploration: a soft landing on #TheMoon. Its "#MoonSniper" mission settled onto the moon's surface Friday morning. But #JAXA, the Japanese space agency, says that while the lander is communicating with Earth, it's not getting power from its solar panels. #SLIM
#Japan is on final approach to become only the fifth country to land on the moon, in what would be a reversal of fortunes as it attempts to join a global space race centred on unravelling the mysteries of the lunar landscape.
If all goes to plan, the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (#Slim) will begin its descent to the rocky lunar surface at midnight on Friday (1500 GMT). #TheMoon#Jaxa#Space
The Navajo nation expressed concerns that human remains would desecrate the Moon. The concerns were ignored. Astrobotic’s Peregrine Lander containing human remains was launched anyway and something has gone wrong. It won’t make it to the Moon.
93 kilometers wide, the crater is named after the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.
Taken with a Celestron C8 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and ZWO183MC camera.
500/1000 frames captured at 70 frames a second.
Image processed in Astrosurface. (First time I've used this. Quite good!)
Today we're scanning a 3rd and final variation of the large regolith surface at @PTS_space#TheMoon, about 3.5x7 meters. Each of these scans is 85GB of raw data with 1500 photos, which is probably going to result in about a 10 billion poly mesh each 🙂
In addition to the final PBR materials, we will also share the raw source data as #CC0 for any researchers to use.
The weather wasn't playing along yesterday, so I couldn't get a very good photo of the Supermoon. However, one night later and the night sky was as clear as I could have hoped for. I'm still out of the city, and still have the telescope with me, so I thought I might as well see if I could get a nice photo tonight. It's not a perfect full moon, but still pretty nice, I think. #themoon
The Darkest Parts of the Moon are Revealed with NASA's New Camera
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been on the Moon since 2009, imaging the surface in high resolution. But it doesn't have the dynamic range to see features that aren't well-lit. To solve this problem, NASA installed a special camera on Korea's Danuri mission called ShadowCam. It's 200 times more light-sensitive than LRO's camera system and can see into the permanently shadowed craters on the Moon. A new mosaic image combines the lunar surface from LRO with the interior of the dark Shackleton Crater.
Check out this photograph / digital artwork that would look great framed and hanging on your wall in your home or office or produced on a variety of products,
The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It orbits around Earth at an average distance of 384,400 km (238,900 mi), or about 30 times Earth's diameter, having a sidereal period of 27.3 days and a synodic period of 29.5 days.