Post AZ1mJOGujwTBFVbpnk by hfalcke@mastodon.social
 (DIR) More posts by hfalcke@mastodon.social
 (DIR) Post #AZ1mJFXxBDkgBkVobw by hfalcke@mastodon.social
       2023-08-23T12:44:23Z
       
       0 likes, 1 repeats
       
       Congratulations to our Indian colleagues who achieved their first soft landing on the moon. Only very few countries have achieved that and particularly not in recent times, where we saw lots of crash landings. They are first on the South Pole.I remember how we were proposing a European lunar lander South Pole Mission 15 years ago and seeing soft landing experiments at EADS. Europe didn’t pull it through. India did. #Moon #Chandrayaan3 #Astrodon
       
 (DIR) Post #AZ1mJMXVBIY9sNM3NY by hfalcke@mastodon.social
       2023-08-23T13:32:15Z
       
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       The reason why the South Pole is so interesting for lunar exploration is because you have peaks of (almost) eternal light where you have solar power most of the year and also direct communication to Earth. On the other hand there are craters in eternal darkness where water and other volatiles are preserved. You also have partially radio quiet zones nearby for radio astronomy experiments. Quite an interesting place for research therefore…https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/SMART-1/Experience_a_virtual_journey_to_the_lunar_Peak_of_Eternal_Light
       
 (DIR) Post #AZ1mJOGujwTBFVbpnk by hfalcke@mastodon.social
       2023-08-23T13:56:56Z
       
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       Just for the fun of it, I googled the past. Found a wiki page to the old LIFE Lunar Infrastructure for Exploration study we conducted together with EADS, which was targeting the lunar South Pole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Infrastructure_for_ExplorationAnd the scientific workshop we organized then https://www.astron.nl/moon/