Back to the moon!

Posted on December 15, 2013 | 9 Comments

Well, this is pretty historic!

China has successfully soft landed its probe on the moon and the rover is now on the surface.

The Planetary society’s Emily Lakdawalla has posted TV video of the unloading of the Rover – see Six wheels on soil for Yutu!

These are 3 animated gifs from Emily’s article

20131214_change3_rover_deploy_final 20131214_change3_rover_deploy_2_transfer 20131214_change3_rover_deploy_1_roll

For those wanting to follow the process in real-time this is the video from the TV coverage.

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9 responses to “Back to the moon!”

  1. Andy | December 15, 2013 at 2:54 pm |

    I wonder how NASA feel about this?

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  2. Cedric Katesby | December 15, 2013 at 4:23 pm |

    There’s no way to know.
    It would be like trying to find out what the Planetary Society feels about it.
    Such things are a deep mystery.

    Like

  3. Andy | December 15, 2013 at 5:03 pm |

    Indeed, everything from NASA is a deep mystery

    However they do have a website that enables them to “reach out”

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  4. Frank Macskasy | December 15, 2013 at 7:22 pm |

    Cool! Ever since ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Dr Who’, I’ve held a keen interest in space exploration…

    I don’t care which nation explores space as long as we’re out there doing it!!

    First thing though,. the Chinese rover should scoot over to one of the Apollo landing sites and beam back footage of the LEM (or the bottom half of it) and the astronaut’s footprints in the lunar dust.

    That should deep-six that particular conspiracy theory…

    Like

  5. Richard Christie | December 15, 2013 at 8:30 pm |

    Personally I don’t think that conspiracy theory merits any such consideration.

    Like

  6. Andy | December 15, 2013 at 8:42 pm |

    What if the Chinese moon landing is a fake? Could the fake Chinese moon landing beam back fake pictures of the fake US moon landing?

    How would we know?
    Can someone ask Colin Craig?

    Like

  7. Cedric Katesby | December 15, 2013 at 10:15 pm |

    First thing though,. the Chinese rover should scoot over to one of the Apollo landing sites and beam back footage of the LEM (or the bottom half of it) and the astronaut’s footprints in the lunar dust.

    Conspiracy theorists would simply explain it away in the same manner as the original footage of the Apollo Landings.
    The classic mistake is to treat science deniers as if they don’t know any better.
    If only they saw this report or if they saw this particular photo then the scales would fall from their eyes and they’d go “Ah, so that’s what happened!. Ok, job done. I shall now abandon my conspiracy theory.”

    That’s not the way it works.
    Science denial is about ideology.
    It’s not about an information deficit.
    It’s not about the work that science demands.
    All the evidence to explode any conspiracy theory is already out there in the mainstream scientific community.
    Yet it doesn’t help at all.
    It’s ideology and propping up that ideology by any means necessary.
    There is no crumb of information too small, no blog too obscure, no PRATT too stupid that it is not useful to reinforce moon landing denier preconceptions.

    A moon landing denier has found “something” that “proves” that some hanky-panky went on.
    It doesn’t matter what that “something” is.
    It could be a photo or a recording or some article or some letter or whatever.
    They have found their anomoly.
    Probably they have found a whole shopping list of them.
    “Key” pieces of evidence.
    (Or “vital” or “significant” etc.)

    That’s enough for them. That settles it.
    That “something” brings the whole house of cards crashing down.
    Never mind about the scientific consensus.
    That doesn’t count.
    It’s powerless in the face of their (shock, gasp, horror) anomoly that they found.
    Never mind about what NASA says.
    Doesn’t count ’cause they’ve got this article/graph/letter/photo etc.

    Moon landing deniers never test their beliefs.
    They can’t provide a coherent methodology.
    Just like the anti-fluoride people.

    They’ll produce blogs and books forever and a day.
    They love doing that.
    All science deniers do.
    Not much science though. Somehow the logic of entering the scientific arena and taking your lumps and winning over the relevent specialists in the field with fruitful research escapes them.

    And, of course, there’s always the problem of how.
    So NASA engaged in fraud and faked the moon landings?
    Really? OK.
    Umm…
    So explain the the nuts and bolts.
    Y’know, how? How did they do it and….get away with it?
    What were the mechanics of the operation?

    That’s when the handwaving begins in earnest.

    Proof the moon landings were faked. Best footage ever.

    Like

  8. Andy | December 16, 2013 at 7:24 am |

    Can’t be that hard can it? I have a GoPro and a few spare parts. Surely we can knock together our own moon rover?

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  9. Andy | December 16, 2013 at 10:12 am |

    The Chinese are planning to set up a base on the moon and look into mining operations, possibly for fuel.
    (Helium 3 would be my guess)

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