China Lands A Droid On The Far Side Of The Moon
Congratulations to China’s Chang’e-4 team for what appears to be a successful landing on the far side of the Moon. This is a first for humanity and an impressive accomplishment! pic.twitter.com/JfcBVsjRC8
— Jim Bridenstine (@JimBridenstine) January 3, 2019
I’m so happy for China; achieving the start of what I hope will be a milestone mission! 2019 has the potential to be a huge year for Space overall.
Excellent work on their part!
It has a neat little bioscience experiment on board the lander as well – a mini-biome to grow potatoes and silkworms in lunar gravity.
Excellent work China, and a really impressive technical and engineering feat.
Let’s see if the rover is sturdier this time around, Lunokhod records are waiting to be crushed
Amazing accomplishment.
Unfortunately, my local news station first referred to China landing a probe on the “dark side of the moon”. They did later refer to the “far side of the moon”. Ugh. I really wish people wouldn’t call the far side the dark side.
The Associated Press story is sort of a mixed bag. The headline says “dark side”, but of course the headline is just the editor talking. The opening paragraph of the article, written by AP’s news department in Japan, refers to it as “the so-called dark side”. In the second paragraph it is referred to as the far side. Later in the article things are explained fairly accurately, although there is the odd statement that the Moon’s far side “is sometimes called the dark side because it faces away from Earth and is relatively unknown.”
The term dark side originated when astronomers had no idea what it even looked like. Even though we don’t yet have any soil or rock samples from the far side (except as meteorites) the far side is no longer unknown, certainly not enough to justify continuing to refer to it as the dark side.
I note that later the title on the AP article was changed to Far Side, with the descriptive internal text intact. They’re getting the message.
I noticed that too, although the original article is unchanged, the headline is different only on the newer article which reports on the rover deployment. But even in the newer article they still repeat the odd statement:
“The far side is popularly called the “dark side” because it can’t be seen from Earth and is relatively unknown, not because it lacks sunlight.”
They got it mostly right except it seems to imply that it still makes sense to refer to it as the dark side since it is “relatively unknown” compared to the near side. Rather than explaining that the term originated when the far side was unseen and truly mysterious, but that the term is now outdated since the far side has been thoroughly surveyed by orbiting spacecraft as much as the near side.
If they are referring to the lack of onsite exploration and samples on the far side, it’s not like we have done much of that on the near side either. With only a few hours of field work in a handful of locations and a few pounds of samples, I would say that nearly fifty years after the first Moon landing the near side is also “relatively unknown”.
I’m not sure it’s worth getting hung up on the phrase “dark side.” English is full of words and expressions that aren’t literally accurate. For example, yelling “look out” typically means “duck” not “stick you head up where something’s going to hit it.” What about just living with the fact “dark side” is common usage and making sure people understand it doesn’t literally mean a lack of illumination.
The general public, or entertainment style media, yes. But my comment was directed toward a major news organization. And not about using the term dark side in the headline, I realize they are trying to sell newspapers (or the electronic equivalent), and as I mentioned they did attempt to explain things in the article so I give them credit for that.
What I said concerned me is that AP implied that “dark side” is a valid description because the far side is relatively unknown since it faces away from the Earth. That’s a pretty ignorant statement considering what has been achieved in lunar exploration by multiple countries over several decades. I realize these aren’t science reporters, but the article is about lunar exploration, and they had three people working on it and I just think they could have avoided making an unfortunate and confusing statement like that.
A number of articles have been fairly good about that. Several have used “dark” as well as “far” side, but also gone to the trouble of explaining. I.e. that “dark side” is an older term and implies unknown or unseen, not a lack of sunlight. Since, like it or not, “dark side” is deeply wedged into common use, I think that’s the best we can reasonably expect.
Where are the wheel tracks?
Rover hasn’t been deployed yet.
It is deployed https://gbtimes.com/chinas-…
Yes – it did shortly after my last post.
By the way, does anyone know what they’re calling the rover? At least in English, Yutu 2 might not sound so good. (I sort of like it, but others might not…)
I believe it actually IS Yutu 2. Literally yu-tutu…
I wonder if this will stimulate US interest in the moon, right now it’s all about Mars. Imagine a rover to closely inspect Apollo sites to see how solar winds affected materials. Or better yet a rover called the Spudis to inspect water ice at the south pole.
That rover was called Resource Prospector if i recall correctly and is no more
It could be recreated. Exploring the lunar south pole still has merit. if we focus on robotics for the moment rather than human landings the cost would be reasonable. Some polar craters are never illuminated. That would be the dark side.
No. RP was replaced by a (so far) unfunded call for small commercial landers (CLPS), with no emphasis on the poles. (And since polar landings are harder (particularly shadowed regions), it’s not gonna happen under CLPS.)
The fact that RP’s “replacement” doesn’t talk about the poles shows that the polar-ice faction has been completely sidelined.
Congratulations, indeed! At the rate America is going, we should duplicate this…about 2069! Experiments to grow potatoes and silk worms in lunar gravity? Why do that? You don’t suppose they are planning on sending humans up there in the near future? How come they aren’t planning to create a (useless) Gateway manned satellite around the moon? It will be interesting to see what Congress does about SLS and Gateway under the new majority!
I’m afraid neither party has a monopoly on choosing meaningful goals in space. We can only do our best to inform them.
Good job China. Odd that the Bridenstine tweet shows a computer rendering rather than one of the actual images acquired.
Complain complain complain. He sent out the tweet himself on his cellphone moments after the landing was confirmed. The actual images were released after his tweet.
No complaints, just wondering if the tweet was actually from Bridenstine, or someone who didn’t notice that it was a rendering (although they’d likely be furloughed). Or if, as you say, this was from when the landing was confirmed but before images came back. Now I know. Thank you.
Congratulations. It will be very interesting to see what they discover.
It would be great if we could deploy rovers to build a moon base, so that when the astronauts/space tourists got there, there was already air, supplies and a return rocket.