Author Topic: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!  (Read 8334 times)

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Offline edyTopic starter

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China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« on: January 04, 2019, 06:53:00 pm »
https://spacenews.com/change-4-makes-historic-first-landing-on-the-far-side-of-the-moon/



The Chang'e-4 probe landed in the Von Kármán crater and is shielded from radio noise coming from Earth, making it ideal to explore external radio signals.... which begs the question, how do they communicate with the probe? It turns out the Chinese have another satellite in orbit around the moon named Queqiao (‘Magpie bridge’ from Chinese mythology) which relays signals.

I find it fascinating and also surprised that it didn't make bigger news here, at least in the West (or have I been living under a rock?). These missions (more Moon landings are planned by China this year) should be heralded as advancing scientific knowledge for all mankind... unless landing on the moon is considered passé. And to those threads saying we never landed on the moon... I guess China is faking it also. Who can prove them wrong? They landed on the FAR side of the moon... :-DD

MORE LINKS:

https://www.space.com/42895-landing-site-chang-e-4-mission.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46760729
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang'e_4
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/04/china-change-4-moon-rover-jade-rabbit-2-sets-off
https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/cnsa_moon_future.html
« Last Edit: January 04, 2019, 06:57:19 pm by edy »
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Offline soldar

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #1 on: January 04, 2019, 08:49:45 pm »
Note: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%27e

And I love Moon Cakes!
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Offline chris_leyson

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #2 on: January 04, 2019, 08:56:58 pm »
Should produce some interesting science. Apparently the Von Kármán crater is within the South Pole–Aitken basin which is one of the largest impact craters in the solor system, 13km deep.

The low frequency spectrometer, LFS, on the lander has three orthogonal antennas and works from 100kHz to 40MHz. Queqiao is also carrying a low frequency spectrometer on board, the NCLE (Netherlands Chinese Low-Frequency Explorer) developed by ASTRON and uses three 5m long orthogonal antennas. Queqiao is in an L2 Lagragian orbit about 65,000km from the moon and that is the first time a satellite has been put into that orbit.

Also as part of the mission two micro satellites were put into lunar orbit, Longjiang-1 and Longjiang-2. Longjiang-1 failed to reach luna orbit . Longjiang-2, aka DSLWP-B, was developed by students at the Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) in the Heilongjiang Province, northeast China. Despite having a mass of just 47 kg, the tiny satellite managed to use its own propulsion to slow down and enter lunar orbit while the relay satellite continued past the Moon to its special destination. During its time in orbit Longjiang-2 has used a student-developed camera to take images of the Moon, Mars, the Sun and other objects. UHF tests have seen data transmitted by Longjiang-2 and received and decoded by radio operators on Earth.

Quote
I find it fascinating and also surprised that it didn't make bigger news here, at least in the West (or have I been living under a rock?)
Nope, you haven't been living under a rock, good information is hard to find but it's improving.

https://directory.eoportal.org/web/eoportal/satellite-missions/c-missions/chang-e-4
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2019/01/china-returning-moon-change-4-mission/
http://www.moondaily.com/reports/Dutch_Radio_Antenna_To_Depart_For_The_Moon_On_Chinese_Mission_999.html


 

Offline rdl

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #3 on: January 05, 2019, 12:46:17 am »
Although not going to the far side, India's ISRO has a mission to the Moon planned for this year. Also, some of the landers originally intended for the Google Lunar X Prize may finally get to the Moon this year.
 

Offline donotdespisethesnake

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #4 on: January 05, 2019, 08:49:16 am »
I find it fascinating and also surprised that it didn't make bigger news here, at least in the West (or have I been living under a rock?). These missions (more Moon landings are planned by China this year) should be heralded as advancing scientific knowledge for all mankind... unless landing on the moon is considered passé.

Two things: landers on the Moon are passé, and the Chinese typically don't release the science data.

But, putting a Chinese flag on the Moon is big news for Chinese leadership I guess.
Bob
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Offline mrpackethead

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #5 on: January 05, 2019, 10:15:55 am »

On a quest to find increasingly complicated ways to blink things
 

Offline soldar

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #6 on: January 05, 2019, 11:11:52 am »
I find it fascinating and also surprised that it didn't make bigger news here, at least in the West (or have I been living under a rock?).
Western countries are very self-centered. We believe we are the best in everything and we are not interested in any news that challenges that. Cite any accomplishment by China and you will often hear things like "all they do is copy cheap stuff, they have no initiative or imagination". In the meanwhile China is progressing like no country in history has done before. A country where just a few decades ago people were literally starving to death and they have brought millions and millions out of poverty and into the middle class. China is quietly building itself up as a world power and they are very quietly investing and buying up much of Africa and South America. Rich western countries, rather than think maybe we should put a little more effort into competing we just dismiss China as wannabes but China is not going to go away. China today is the biggest market for cell phones, computers, automobiles, etc. Pretending they don't exist and locking your country out of commerce with them will only result in disaster for your own country.

I am old enough to remember when western countries disparaged Japan's products as being cheap and of inferior quality. They laughed at Japan and called them imitators and makers of cheap copies. Just ask western car and electronics manufacturers how that worked out for them.

China has put stuff on Luna and it shows they have the capacity, the money, the means, the know-how. Poo-pooing the feat just to make ourselves feel good is shortsighted and will backfire. We need to get off our butts and look at ways to be more productive and less whinny.
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Offline A Hellene

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #7 on: January 05, 2019, 11:59:33 am »
So...

Is, finally, that damned thing made of kasseri or not?
We should not be kept in the dark anymore... :P

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #8 on: January 05, 2019, 01:06:30 pm »
I find it fascinating and also surprised that it didn't make bigger news here, at least in the West (or have I been living under a rock?).

The problem is that China is so secretive about it, it's hard to get any info at all, and they don't seem to feed much to the western media.
 

Offline soldar

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #9 on: January 05, 2019, 02:03:29 pm »
The problem is that China is so secretive about it, it's hard to get any info at all, and they don't seem to feed much to the western media.
I totally disagree with that. The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program is well known and has a Wikipedia page where you can read all about it, past, present and future.

The Chinese Government is not secretive at all but, on the contrary, are presenting it as a great achievement.

It is western media who give low precedence to news from China; well, from non-western countries in general. Big news from Asia, Africa or South America are relegated below much less important news that originates in western countries and even a lot of that western "news" is "manufactured".  "Professor of XYZ University says women suffer discrimination" is given higher priority than "hundreds drown trying to get away from civil war and reach safety". That's the way it works because that is what we ask for.

I follow news from China much more closely than your average westerner because my wife is Chinese and most of the times I tell her "did you hear about this that happened in China and is in today's news?" she responds "that's old, it was in the news three days ago".   Western news agencies keep those news of "lesser importance" in wait and to be used for filling in.  https://www.reuters.com/places/china

Again, the volume of news from different origins says more about us than about the Chinese.

I would say the same about Russia, Middle East, etc. There are perfectly good news sources out there Russia Today, Al Jazeera, etc. but we dismiss them as not in line with our interests and way of seeing things.  We are more interested in knowing that Sandra Bullock got a pimple on her nose and what she did about it.

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Offline VK3DRB

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #10 on: January 06, 2019, 12:07:29 am »
And yet almost no Chinese in the PRC would have ever heard of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. If they had, they would have known that there is no dark side of the moon, really. As of a matter of fact, it's all dark.
 

Offline raptor1956

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #11 on: January 06, 2019, 12:22:10 am »
The problem is that China is so secretive about it, it's hard to get any info at all, and they don't seem to feed much to the western media.
I totally disagree with that. The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program is well known and has a Wikipedia page where you can read all about it, past, present and future.

The Chinese Government is not secretive at all but, on the contrary, are presenting it as a great achievement.

It is western media who give low precedence to news from China; well, from non-western countries in general. Big news from Asia, Africa or South America are relegated below much less important news that originates in western countries and even a lot of that western "news" is "manufactured".  "Professor of XYZ University says women suffer discrimination" is given higher priority than "hundreds drown trying to get away from civil war and reach safety". That's the way it works because that is what we ask for.

I follow news from China much more closely than your average westerner because my wife is Chinese and most of the times I tell her "did you hear about this that happened in China and is in today's news?" she responds "that's old, it was in the news three days ago".   Western news agencies keep those news of "lesser importance" in wait and to be used for filling in.  https://www.reuters.com/places/china

Again, the volume of news from different origins says more about us than about the Chinese.

I would say the same about Russia, Middle East, etc. There are perfectly good news sources out there Russia Today, Al Jazeera, etc. but we dismiss them as not in line with our interests and way of seeing things.  We are more interested in knowing that Sandra Bullock got a pimple on her nose and what she did about it.

OK, so the Chinese are very open and we've just misjudged them -- so can you point me to a source for video from the Chinese lander?  Got a source for the images and video they are collecting?  And what about the science -- where can I get updates on the science they are producing?


Brian
 

Offline cdev

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #12 on: January 06, 2019, 04:25:49 am »
It is a huge accomplishment.

Unfortunately, at least in many other areas, they are anything but "open".
 
They are a totalitarian state which is by definition secretive.

They have always been that way. Even before the PRC.

They have never had anything even remotely resembling democracy in mainland China.

Its a complicated situation.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2019, 04:27:49 am by cdev »
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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #13 on: January 06, 2019, 05:19:01 am »
The problem is that China is so secretive about it, it's hard to get any info at all, and they don't seem to feed much to the western media.
I totally disagree with that. The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program is well known and has a Wikipedia page where you can read all about it, past, present and future.

The Chinese Government is not secretive at all but, on the contrary, are presenting it as a great achievement.

It is western media who give low precedence to news from China; well, from non-western countries in general. Big news from Asia, Africa or South America are relegated below much less important news that originates in western countries and even a lot of that western "news" is "manufactured".  "Professor of XYZ University says women suffer discrimination" is given higher priority than "hundreds drown trying to get away from civil war and reach safety". That's the way it works because that is what we ask for.

I follow news from China much more closely than your average westerner because my wife is Chinese and most of the times I tell her "did you hear about this that happened in China and is in today's news?" she responds "that's old, it was in the news three days ago".   Western news agencies keep those news of "lesser importance" in wait and to be used for filling in.  https://www.reuters.com/places/china

Again, the volume of news from different origins says more about us than about the Chinese.

I would say the same about Russia, Middle East, etc. There are perfectly good news sources out there Russia Today, Al Jazeera, etc. but we dismiss them as not in line with our interests and way of seeing things.  We are more interested in knowing that Sandra Bullock got a pimple on her nose and what she did about it.

OK, so the Chinese are very open and we've just misjudged them -- so can you point me to a source for video from the Chinese lander?  Got a source for the images and video they are collecting?  And what about the science -- where can I get updates on the science they are producing?

What about hype videos leading up to it, chats with the scientists?, live coverage of the landing? etc
AFAIK they don't do anything even remotely close to what western agencies do in terms of public coverage.
 

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #14 on: January 06, 2019, 05:21:07 am »
There are perfectly good news sources out there Russia Today, Al Jazeera, etc. but we dismiss them as not in line with our interests and way of seeing things. 

You aren't speaking for me, I watch those sources just like any other news outlet.
 

Offline Rick Law

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #15 on: January 06, 2019, 06:53:42 am »
I've been paying attention.  I knew they had a plan to do so, but I barely knew the probe landed until I caught the news article in SCMP (South China Morning Post) just hours before I got to this forum.

I think the reason they are not making loud noises is that there was a fear of failure and getting egg-on-face in public.  Now that the landing apparently succeeded, they may be making louder noises and more frequent noises about their future plans.

This is a good development for all man-kind.  I think they view it as "I've arrived (to the status of being an advance technology capable nation)."  This hopefully will ignite competition.  With competition, advancements will be made more frequent and at more speed.

Trump has voiced interest in Mars mission.  I think he might not have that Mars interest had it not been China's plans of Mar mission.  Regardless of whether China get there first or if USA get there first, we all will be richer in knowledge and technology driven by the winds of that competition.
 

Offline TheNewLab

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #16 on: January 06, 2019, 07:35:51 am »

I think the reason they are not making loud noises is that there was a fear of failure and getting egg-on-face in public.  Now that the landing apparently succeeded, they may be making louder noises and more frequent noises about their future plans.

This is a good development for all man-kind.  I think they view it as "I've arrived (to the status of being an advance technology capable nation)."  This hopefully will ignite competition.  With competition, advancements will be made more frequent and at more speed.
Yes, keeping face is important. When the US demanded the return of the Spy plane that emergency landed back in the" otts" (xx00's), Bush was obnoxious about it, and so China, simply dismantled it completely and told the US to pick up the box crates. I understand they put all the screws and fasteners into another crate.

The US govt. did not get this. but my HK friend's did!

I knew they had launched a probe. They have plans to do the same for Mars. It appears we now have a space race! in a good way.
China wants a manned flight to the Mood, and are talking about a moon base.
The Eu wants to do their own manned space flight to somewhere. moon? Mars?
India the same
Turkey is building their own space launch pad for putting their people in space..
Has S. Korea, or Japan also talking about their own manned space flights.too?

I guess when politics and economy gets difficult on earth..Space becomes the new focus.

We may have half a dozen nations or more doing their own independent space exploration!
This is really great!
 

Offline TheNewLab

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #17 on: January 06, 2019, 07:38:23 am »
..to the Mood..   :palm:
Well, I guess mood is really important in space :-//

 :popcorn: I need another Guinness..
 

Offline TheNewLab

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #18 on: January 06, 2019, 08:03:16 am »
The problem is that China is so secretive about it, it's hard to get any info at all, and they don't seem to feed much to the western media.
I totally disagree with that. The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program is well known and has a Wikipedia page where you can read all about it, past, present and future.

The Chinese Government is not secretive at all but, on the contrary, are presenting it as a great achievement.

It is western media who give low precedence to news from China; [by].. non-western countries

I would say the same about Russia, Middle East, etc. There are perfectly good news sources out there Russia Today, Al Jazeera, etc.... we dismiss them ...[peroid].  We are more interested in knowing that Sandra Bullock got a pimple on her nose and what she did about it.

Solder, I so agree, and agree, and agree.
However, China promote as great achievements and makes public,except for the details, until certain. Russia does this...and other nations.
Tthe USA  goes on and on and on about what we are, what we want to, and so often what we plan to, but never do... Welcome to the empire and Emerald City....  Only not so emerald.
I quit, disturbed by, US news when American TV stations suddenly changed all of their TV news sets the day we started bomping Iraq. Months of Scott Ritter saying there "are NO!! WMD's here" repeatedly reporting, UNSCOM (sp?) have covered all Iraq, had carte blanche to do surprise inspections anywhere. Then, I one day all the news stations just ignored what they had been covering for months and war joined the bandwagon.

Truth is, by watching and reading international sources I still get more than enough US news..

May I add? 24, NHK, and DW (not "America") the Hurriet, and some of those independent, non-mainstream..typically non-profit investigative sources?
So many US top, Pulitzer Prize journalists have left their major papers & have gone outside of the USA to independent organizations to report..
AH!! I just learned that all the US "fake news" talk, actually started with Putin and Russia, which is very old strategy to create doubt and make citizen's except the propaganda they want you to believe.
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« Last Edit: January 06, 2019, 08:09:37 am by TheNewLab »
 

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #19 on: January 06, 2019, 09:47:05 am »
Can you please leave the politics off the forum.
 

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #20 on: January 06, 2019, 09:49:48 am »
Yes. China is usually not shy to put these things on media if it knows the success rate is near 100%, such as launching a manned mission with all proven technology. After all, no one has ever landed on the back of the moon.

Technically, landing on the far side of the moon shouldn't be any more difficult than then ear side, right?
The far side would have a signal trip delay time, as it has to go through the repeater at the legrange point, but the descent would be automated in either case.
 

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #21 on: January 06, 2019, 09:54:38 am »


 

Online coppercone2

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #22 on: January 06, 2019, 09:58:43 am »
I find it fascinating and also surprised that it didn't make bigger news here, at least in the West (or have I been living under a rock?).

The problem is that China is so secretive about it, it's hard to get any info at all, and they don't seem to feed much to the western media.

i dont think we should allow for a lunar gap.
 

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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #23 on: January 06, 2019, 09:58:50 am »
I love these images from the Change'3 mission:



 
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Re: China just landed a probe on the far side of the moon!
« Reply #24 on: January 06, 2019, 10:03:39 am »
it looks kinda like a hot dog stand
 


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