[HN Gopher] Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]
___________________________________________________________________
Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]
Author : osivertsson
Score : 1533 points
Date : 2023-08-23 10:30 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.isro.gov.in)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.isro.gov.in)
| TuringNYC wrote:
| Firstly - congratulations to the whole team on this achievement
|
| I'm also curious
|
| - Why the south pole of the moon? does it have an added
| significance vs other locations on the moon?
|
| - Is a landing on the south pole more difficult to achieve? Seems
| so according to this article:
| https://www.reuters.com/science/why-are-space-agencies-racin...
| dougmwne wrote:
| Possible water which would be a giant resource for a permanent
| presence.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_south_pole
|
| > It is of special interest to scientists because of the
| occurrence of water ice in permanently shadowed areas around
| it. The lunar south pole region features craters that are
| unique in that the near-constant sunlight does not reach their
| interior. Such craters are cold traps that contain a fossil
| record of hydrogen, water ice, and other volatiles dating from
| the early Solar System
| actuator wrote:
| I believe Chandrayaan 1 has detected water, but not sure if
| it was the first one to do so
| abhayhegde wrote:
| The definitive discovery of Moon water came from
| Chandrayaan-1 which carried with it a NASA-provided science
| instrument called the Moon Mineralogical Mapper--M3 for
| short--that observed how the surface absorbed infrared
| light. Using this data, M3 determined that previously
| suspected water molecules were ice inside the Moon's polar
| craters [0].
|
| However, the first direct evidence of water vapor near the
| Moon was obtained by the Apollo 14 in 1971 [0]. A series of
| bursts of water vapor ions were observed by the instrument
| mass spectrometer at the lunar surface near the Apollo 14
| landing site.
|
| [0]: https://www.planetary.org/articles/water-on-the-moon-
| guide
|
| [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_water
| firesteelrain wrote:
| NASA LCROSS confirmed it before the Indian mission (which
| NASA instruments also on the Indian mission confirmed
| first). After NASA confirmed, Indian officials came out
| with their own announcement
| pavon wrote:
| Chandrayaan 3 landed at around 69 degrees south latitude
| which isn't far enough south to access the permanently
| shadowed craters where large ice deposits might occur (and
| the Pragyan rover uses solar panels for power).
|
| I haven't read specific reasons for choosing that site, but
| we have never landed that far south, and it will be
| interesting to see what differences (if any) there are from
| the more central latitudes, which is a good enough reason on
| its own.
| Tagbert wrote:
| It may be due to communications problems if a lander came
| down in one of those shadowed craters. We would not be able
| to communicate with it. it would probably require relay
| satellites around the moon to mediate that communication.
| ganteth wrote:
| Moon undergoes extreme temperature fluctuations from day to
| night, resulting in boil off. There are spots on the South Pole
| that never see sunlight, so it's our best bet for finding large
| deposits of water (as ice).
| Symmetry wrote:
| The ice would also be pretty close to the Moon's peaks of
| eternal light[1] where you don't have to have your solar
| panels spend half of every month in darkness. So basically
| where you'd want to live on the Moon if you had to pick
| somewhere.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_of_eternal_light
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Isn't that also related to why the Lunar Gateway (the
| proposed space station component of the current Artemis
| project at Nasa) was proposed to be in a lunar polar orbit?
| szundi wrote:
| You can easily reach every spot froma polar orbit as the
| moon rotates under your orbit
| russdill wrote:
| It's 69deg south, so it's not so much the south pole as the
| polar region. For reference, the major landmass of Antarctica
| starts around that point on Earth. McMurdo Station is at around
| 78deg South.
| edpichler wrote:
| This is such a difficult achievement. And they did it spending
| USD 75 Million, almost 2x less the costs of production of the
| Interestelar movie.
|
| Very well done, India. Respect!
| mattigames wrote:
| It made much less on profits than Interstellar tho.
| pests wrote:
| Ah yes, the same way USPS is unprofitable.
| anovikov wrote:
| It went so cleanly it almost made an impression of being easy.
| Congrats!
| fractalb wrote:
| Congratulations to all the engineers and technicians involved.
| Looking forward to some interesting findings by the rover.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| They started streaming ... how many minutes now until the landing
| is expected?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| The woman answered my question -- 18 minutes until powered
| descent begins.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| the-dude wrote:
| Am I mistaken or do they have an onboard view in the command
| center, but are not showing us?
| mkl wrote:
| They are showing it sometimes, with a camera pointed at that
| screen - the one to the left of the big numbers with
| velocities. There's also a simulated view that shows the
| surface (the second big screen from the left).
| underdeserver wrote:
| The applause for the successful landing starts at 44:50 (take a
| few seconds' buffer).
| kpandit wrote:
| I was trying to find the schedule for the rover including on
| ISRO's website[1], but the closest I could find was this[2] and
| this[3] that suggest the rover will be rolled out in the next few
| hours or may be tomorrow and it has a life expectancy of one
| lunar day(14 earth days). Anyone knows if it will be streamed as
| well?
|
| [1] https://www.isro.gov.in/Chandrayaan3.html
|
| [2] https://www.thehindu.com/sci-
| tech/science/chandrayaan-3-miss...
|
| [3] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/08/23/science/india-
| moon-l...
| mercurialsolo wrote:
| Any space mission is fairly complex no matter the agency private
| or public.
|
| For me the most interesting part to watch personally was the
| telemetry. What's the latency involved here, do they have agency
| in terms of manual overrides and intervention in case things go
| wrong?
|
| What does RTT look like, are there more efficient encoding of
| data to allow minimal information?
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| There is a latency issue, not a throughput issue
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Latency is dominated by speed of light delays, which are about
| 2.5 seconds round trip. Encoding is generally more concerned
| with data integrity than data minimization.
|
| I'm not sure about the details of this mission and whether the
| Indians have negotiated usage of the Deep Space Network, but
| with the large antennas of the DSN multi megabit rates are
| quite achievable.
| mirchiseth wrote:
| It will be cool to send a buddy drone with these landers. A
| minute or so before the touch down, detach from lander and shoot
| the landing. Then go back and attach with lander for charging and
| do periodic flights.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| fantastic to see India space program. More countries in space,
| the better
| piyushpr134 wrote:
| India has a space program since 70s. It has a sent moon
| missions thrice now, one mars mission and has an upcoming sun
| probe too. It has a polar orbit launch vehicle which has one of
| the safest record in the world. Cost wise, it is pretty
| effective for satellite launched
| the-dude wrote:
| I saw the onboard camera show movement after the celebrations
| started. Did anyone else see this?
|
| The onboard has not been shown since.
| dirkc wrote:
| This happens a lot to me in KSP, the lander tends to slide all
| the way to the bottom of the slope. Most of the time it's okay,
| just need to tweak the dampeners on the landing legs a bit ;)
|
| EDIT: I went to re-watch the moment on youtube and it does seem
| like the lander moves slightly to the left!
| shivdeepak wrote:
| That's probably because the image data being larger than the
| on-board sensor data would take longer to reach earth, thus the
| latency.
| the-dude wrote:
| Obviously I am not a golfer, but I would have waited until
| the onboard stabilized, sensors be damned.
| goku12 wrote:
| The sensor data is a reliable low-entropy indicator. The
| engines are probably cutoff based on the same data (most
| probably a set of load sensors on the legs). If the data
| indicates that the engine has cutoff, the craft is
| stationary and if the data is still streaming, then it's a
| pretty good indicator that it worked as expected. I would
| trust it more than the video - especially when the video is
| lagging heavily.
|
| PS: I have worked extensively on something related. Video
| is good to have and helps in post-flight analysis. However,
| it can also mislead sometimes. Sensor data gives you a much
| clearer initial picture.
| CAvanessians wrote:
| [flagged]
| btbuildem wrote:
| The moment of landing:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dim8elzo5vE
|
| When I look at this, it seems it's a long-range optical feed of
| the moon surface with lander graphics laid over it. Has anyone
| found footage of the actual craft touching down? It would be
| amazing to see.
| haolez wrote:
| On the dark side of the moon?
| btbuildem wrote:
| Not sure if you're joking.. but there's light on the dark
| side of the Moon, it's just called that because it's never
| visible from Earth.
|
| I assumed the craft that brought the lander into orbit would
| have some sort of visual tracking, but maybe the distances
| involved make that impossible and all we get is telemetry + a
| rendering to visualize it.
| 14 wrote:
| I am hoping that the lander has some ultra high definition
| video but because of bandwidth we haven't seen it yet but
| as soon as the upload to earth is complete I am hoping we
| get a much higher resolution video of this landing.
| haolez wrote:
| I was thinking more about a recorder positioned on earth or
| on orbit, but I forgot about the main stage of the ship
| that deploys the probe and should have visibility of the
| dark side.
| kimbler wrote:
| Hopefully they can leave behind a camera to film the next
| arrivals.
| steno132 wrote:
| An embarrassing day for America.
|
| The country that first visited the Moon should have explored the
| lunar south pole decades ago. Then the dark side of the moon.
| Then a manned colony.
|
| Instead we are beaten by a foreign nation to the south pole. And
| our next project is a manned landing on the moon, which we
| already accomplished in the 1960s.
| nrb wrote:
| Great to see other countries making accomplishments in space, I
| don't see a cause for embarrassment when we're driving rovers
| and helicopters around on Mars.
| poyu wrote:
| Doesn't it just all comes down to money? The US just doesn't
| focus on that anymore. Which is a shame, I guess.
| kpandit wrote:
| We are doing now what you did half a century ago. How exactly
| is that embarrassing for you?
| steno132 wrote:
| The US should have been to the first to the lunar south pole,
| not a foreign country.
| nrb wrote:
| "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the
| Moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind"
|
| To the moon, we're all foreigners.
| steno132 wrote:
| Humans don't view things from a moon perspective, they
| view things from a human perspective.
|
| Space races are real, it's each country for itself, and
| it's a zero sum game. And today's not a good day.
| seatac76 wrote:
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chandrayaan-3-mak...
| good read on the entire thing.
| cratermoon wrote:
| for the 2023 season: India 1, Russia 0
| simion314 wrote:
| Server seems to be busy.
| pratio wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLA_64yz8Ss
| simion314 wrote:
| thx
| srivmutk wrote:
| Momentous day not just for India, but also for humanity.
| XorNot wrote:
| Looking forward to this. The Moon has been on a role eating
| landers and space probes lately.
| goku12 wrote:
| > The Moon has been on a role eating landers and space probes
| lately.
|
| The complexity of landing on the moon is somewhere between that
| of launching a spacecraft and that of a self-driving car. It's
| sad that so many landers were lost - it would have been
| heartbreaking for those who built them. But I hope that they
| attempt it again and perfect this complex task.
| bobosha wrote:
| congrats ISRO and India for this great achievement.
| psychphysic wrote:
| Congratulations India! And everyone.
|
| Actually congratulations to all countries still running space
| programmes including Russia's failure.
|
| The more the merrier.
|
| This is a stupendously difficult thing to do, India is truly a
| superpower.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| > Actually congratulations to all countries still running space
| programmes including Russia's failure.
|
| No. Russia can get fucked.
| f6v wrote:
| When you whole Internet personality is being obnoxious... I'm
| sorry you're the way you're. But do you really think you
| contribute something to discussion with your comment?
| jgilias wrote:
| [flagged]
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Agreed, Russia shouldn't get a pass just because "space"
| given all the ways they have shown total disregard for
| everyone else.
|
| Their war set back many international cooperations,
| they've destroyed Ukraine's space industry, they stole
| satellites, launches for which had been paid for, only to
| turn around and put absurd conditions to launch them, and
| under Rogozin they showed blatant disregard for NASAs
| attempts to keep the ISS cooperation neutral.
| [deleted]
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| In science and exploration the only losers are the ones who
| don't try to begin with.
| darkclouds wrote:
| Here Here.
|
| It also ironic that a country and population seen as backwards
| by the British Empire have overtaken the British in landing on
| the moon.
|
| Would be nice to see the African and South American continent
| achieve a moon landing as well.
| parthdesai wrote:
| Just wait till BBC decides to throw a fit about it again
| Symbiote wrote:
| Note Britain is the third-largest contributor to the European
| Space Agency, and has a fairly large space industry
| (satellites, instruments etc).
|
| (The Beagle 2 lander which crashed into Mars in 2004 was
| managed from Britain.)
| darkclouds wrote:
| Stevenage produces tiny satellites, but as long as prices
| are jacked up, anyone can claim its a big industry. Mr
| Pillinger is a lovely bloke, but firing a giant zorb ball
| onto a distance planet or moon, isnt exactly rocket science
| is it?
| BossingAround wrote:
| Apologies for the OT, but it's "hear hear", not "here here"
| [0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hear,_hear
| darkclouds wrote:
| My hearing is gone, I forgot about it.
| yumraj wrote:
| > It also ironic that a country and population seen as
| backwards by the British Empire have overtaken the British in
| landing on the moon.
|
| This is not the moment to go there, but still since we're on
| the topic, current leaders of Britain (Prime Minister),
| Ireland (Taoiseach) and Scotland (First Minister) are all of
| Indian-Subcontinent origin. Britain and Ireland have leaders
| of Indian origin, while Scotland has of Pakistani origin.
| darkclouds wrote:
| I think its good, but they are poisoned chalice jobs and
| smacks of virtue signalling.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Sunak and Yousaf are both Punjabi, Sunak's family was from
| Gujranwala region in Pakistani Punjab before partition and
| Yousaf's is from Khanewal in Pakistani Punjab as well, plus
| both are the children of East African Indians who moved to
| the UK during the mass expulsion of South Asians in the
| 1960s and 70s (Freddie Mercury is also part of that
| community as well, though ethnically Parsi Gujarati). Also,
| they both attended elite Grammar Schools, so they were
| within the same Old Boys network.
|
| They're much closer culturally than Varadkar who's dad's
| side of the family is from Konkan region (the coastal
| region stretching from Goa to Mumbai/Bombay)
| f6v wrote:
| There's a novel Artemis by Andy Weir where Africa became the
| place to launch transports to the Moon. I'd happy for them if
| they managed to turn things around.
| [deleted]
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Streaming YouTube link https://www.youtube.com/live/DLA_64yz8Ss
| saagarjha wrote:
| Seems like it's in Hindi. Any links for the anglophones?
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| It's a dual-language telecast. The commentators alternate
| between Hindi and English, keep watching.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Ah, I see. Thanks!
| [deleted]
| shivekkhurana wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLA_64yz8Ss
|
| This is in English
| achow wrote:
| They are alternatively doing in two languages - Hindi and
| then in English.
| saagarjha wrote:
| That's the same link.
| abhinavk wrote:
| They both are the same links.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| tarunupaday wrote:
| I think they switch between english and hindi every 5 minutes
| or so.
| robofanatic wrote:
| Great achievement! Space is incredibly hard as they say. Hope
| ISRO continues with this momentum and achieves more success in
| its future missions!
| reaperducer wrote:
| One of the clocks is labeled "IST," which I assume means India
| Standard Time.
|
| Another clocks are labeled "GHY," "HAW," and "BIK." What do they
| indicate?
| mkl wrote:
| Goonhilly, Hawaii, but I can't figure out BIK. They're NASA and
| ESA tracking stations: https://www.eoportal.org/other-space-
| activities/estrack,
| https://www.indiatoday.in/science/chandrayaan-3/story/how-is...
| dmix wrote:
| If the other 2 are NASA and ESA the other BIK is probably a
| Russian one.
| varshar wrote:
| Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan
| fakedang wrote:
| Nice catch. It's definitely Baikonur.
| mendigou wrote:
| It's a station from DLR in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan: https://www.d
| lr.de/eoc/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-5287/102...
| jhalstead wrote:
| I'm not very familiar with this source [0], but it states
| "ESA was providing support to the Chandrayaan-3 mission from
| three of its ground stations located in Kourou (French
| Guiana), Goonhilly (United Kingdom), and New Norcia (Western
| Australia)." Although BIK doesn't obviously map to any of
| those.
|
| [0] http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/india/chandrayaan-3-euro
| pea....
| user_7832 wrote:
| Fwiw the esa time is the same as Amsterdam Time (cest, get
| +2)
| jvm___ wrote:
| GHY is probably https://www.goonhilly.org/
|
| So, likely the current time at the location of the radio
| antennas they're using to communicate with the lander.
| cyberbolt23 wrote:
| Soft-landing.... hope so.
| darthrupert wrote:
| Well done to everyone involved!
| bilsbie wrote:
| Ok dumb question. In the video starting at 13:15, that's an
| animation right?
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| Yes. They didn't have a live feed from any cameras, as far as I
| can tell.
| drones wrote:
| Currently in a live server with others watching and it's a lot of
| fun. I happen to know many people working in the space industry,
| and a lot of great engineers come from India. Very happy and
| excited for India and its people. Goodluck!
|
| edit: lets goo!!!
| [deleted]
| kumarvvr wrote:
| As an Indian, I feel elated to show one more feather in Indias
| cap, as an inspiration to my son.
| kaycey2022 wrote:
| Yeah!! Let's go!
| [deleted]
| skynetv2 wrote:
| Despite all the sour comments trying to find fault and criticize,
| this is a remarkable achievement, especially on the heels of the
| failed Chandrayaan-2 mission. Congrats to the team!!! Just 4
| years to recover from the failure and achieve a phenomenal
| success. India just keeps executing despite what others may say.
|
| The team deserves even more praise to be able to achieve these
| wins with limited resources.
| [deleted]
| luminati wrote:
| re: "Just 4 years to recover" This mission was originally
| slated for 2021 but COVID ended up delaying it.
| mathgeek wrote:
| Which to some makes it even more impressive.
| kensai wrote:
| And a very inexpensive/frugal attempt for that matter! It has
| been a miracle of cost effectiveness. This is a wonder on its
| own.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >It has been a miracle of cost effectiveness. This is a
| wonder on its own.
|
| India has the third highest global GDP by PPP. This is
| incredibly powerful when you invest in your citizens
| education the way they have, as the cost of anything like
| this ends up coming down to skilled labor prices. Their
| number one competitive advantage at this point is human
| capital.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| Really the true wonder! Compare this to the US's SLS plans!
| The budget is mindboggling.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Yea, back originally when the SLS was on the drawing board
| to be made it was supposed to be the safest ROI and it
| hasn't even been launched successfully yet .
| enragedcacti wrote:
| It had a successful mission back in November:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_1
| dotnet00 wrote:
| To be fair, the spending is SLS's primary mission, the
| snakes pushing for it couldn't actually care less about how
| often it flies or how useful it is.
| elevaet wrote:
| What was the budget, and how does it compare to similar
| projects?
| Joe_Cool wrote:
| According to Wikipedia they estimated US$90 Million in July
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-3#Funding
| abhayhegde wrote:
| Especially impressive when taken into account that ISRO couldn't
| achieve the soft-landing with Chandrayaan-2 four years ago.
|
| One of the big things they changed with this lander compared to
| Chandrayaan-2 was to increase the landing zone from 500mx500m to
| 4000mx4000m and adding more sensors and cameras to help the
| computer find a good landing site.
|
| For those who didn't watch live, there was another hover phase (0
| m/s descent) at 150m above the lunar surface before final commit.
| sound1 wrote:
| Very well explained
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| > was to increase the landing zone from 500mx500m to
| 4000mx4000m
|
| Can you elaborate on this? Presumably it could land...anywhere
| on the moon, so what exactly does it mean to increase the
| landing zone? What determines where it can or can't land?
| pests wrote:
| There is a target area we want to land in order to
| investigate certain terrain or other POI's near the target.
|
| It obviously can't land on mountains and certain rocky or
| steep terrain. They know its limitations. These limitations
| determine where it can or can't land.
|
| During target selection they will find an adaquet place on
| the surface that meets the criteria.
|
| By increasing from 500m^2 to 4000m^2 they need to find a
| larger area that meets those same needs.
|
| This also helps during the actual landing. It can aim
| anywhere inside that 4000m^2 area instead of being limited to
| just a 500m^2 area.
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| oh I see, so it's not that they picked the same center and
| said "oh btw now you can land in a larger circle around it"
| but rather they picked a different site altogether? that
| makes a lot more sense, thanks
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| The whole hover and look around thing was super impressive to
| me. That choice to spend mass on fuel for such maneuvers vs
| science instruments seems to always go to science in NASA
| debates and we end up with "either it will land here, or it
| will die." :-)
|
| Great outcome and I look forward to the pictures sent back by
| the rover!
| bluGill wrote:
| A very large number of missions to other planets have failed
| because they crashed on the planet. Thus anyone who is
| serious about getting a mission to a different planet will
| put a lot of effort into the landing system. The fuel burn is
| cheap compared to a crash landing on the moon (as Russia just
| had a couple days ago). The above is even at NASA, they have
| done a lot of complex landing systems over the years.
|
| Most missions have several different scientific systems on
| board. If any one fails well the others still make the
| mission a partial success. If the landing system fails they
| all become a failure.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Just checking in here, did you find something in my writing
| that suggested I was being disparaging or dismissive of
| what an awesome accomplishment this is? If so would love to
| know how you got there so that I could be more clear in the
| future.
| the-dude wrote:
| Does anybody know if we will be watching a simulation or actual
| footage?
|
| I am asking because the livestream of the last failed moonlanding
| this year didn't feature _a single second_ of footage. None.
| caeruleus wrote:
| It was mentioned they were receiving footage continuously. I
| think when all monitors are shown, in the middle you can
| discern pictures being rendered.
|
| Edit: They called this out now, it seems those are live
| pictures.
| imglorp wrote:
| This one has onboard cameras and there are curated videos from
| other phases of flight at the OP link.
| the-dude wrote:
| Thank you, I missed that.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| The lander external view is simulation, but they have a camera
| (Lander Imager Display) looking downwards that is transmitting
| live photos every couple of seconds (center, top right on the
| main screen).
| suyash wrote:
| Though it's disappointing to see simulation, it makes sense
| as there is no external vehicle to capture the live video and
| stream it. The lander cameras are showing realistic video
| though.
|
| In principle, it should be clearly stated which is real and
| which is sim.
| jvm___ wrote:
| Why won't the people landing on the moon cater to _me_?
| _visgean wrote:
| but seriously why would they not? If they have something nice
| to show of why not? This is publicly paid project (by indian
| tax payers) that is political in its nature. Why not show as
| much as possible?
| fractalb wrote:
| It's simulation for sure. Would there be sunlight to view it
| live?
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Yes. For solar panel purposes they're landing in the lunar
| day (14 Earth days?).
|
| _Edit:_ At the start of a lunar day, which equals 28 Earth
| days. (Source: BBC https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-asia-
| india-66576580 )
| vivegi wrote:
| There's no footage from the last one as the lander crash-landed
| on the surface of the moon.
|
| NASA reported locating the Vikram Lander's debris in Dec 2019:
| https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2019/vikram-lande...
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Definitely no footage, at most maybe a picture if it lands
| successfully.
|
| The only footage we have of any spacecraft landing anywhere
| other than Earth is either from Apollo or the Perseverance
| skycrane deployment. If they do have footage, it'll be like the
| latter, retrieved after the fact.
| lionkor wrote:
| Thats not accurate, there is "footage" of other spacecraft,
| such as the first soviet venus lander or so
| deidei wrote:
| Congrats to the team at ISRO!
|
| It makes me wonder, what is it that ISRO does differently than
| most other government agencies in India that makes them so
| efficient.
| adrr wrote:
| This is awesome. Though one e strange this is having the PM
| heavily featured in this broadcast with side by side shots.
| jvm___ wrote:
| Scott Manly has a video on why he thinks the last one failed. It
| sounds like their landing software didn't have "oh crap, we're
| way off course, just land wherever". It only had the happy path
| of "fly to here and land", so when it switched to the landing
| phase it tried valiently (including flying upside down) to try to
| fly back to the landing zone, but the landing zone was much
| further than fuel supplies allowed.
|
| Hopefully they have upgraded software to just gracefully attempt
| a landing, and hopefully they won't be off course.
| publicola1990 wrote:
| Also did they use image processing to guide the landing this
| time? American and Chinese probes seems to use it to do the
| final phase of soft landing.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| They have to, don't they? There's no other way.
| sumodm wrote:
| Yes, this seems to be one of the issues. Here is a talk by ISRO
| Chairman S Somanath at Indian Institute of Science (IISc) about
| the same and what they added. He goes into details of what went
| wrong. These are based on my limited understanding. One of the
| thrusters had an issue and got activated for longer (or may be
| activation profile of thrusters at its extreme's were different
| from modeled). They had a narrow landing region selected as
| final position (even one possible point). So now their control
| system tried to correct this but the algorithm had a bug and
| that caused it to be further delayed. At this point the
| correction required, i.e; thrusters to be activated, was
| outside the tolerance levels. So finally ended up with 50m/s
| vertical speed.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ2sNRP1opY&t=1440s
|
| With new one, they did couple of things. Larger area to be
| selected for landing based on camera input. Escape sequence to
| more achievable points, if something like this happens again.
| They increased the tolerance from 10 degrees to 25 degrees and
| guessing fixed the bug in code. They also did some smoothening
| of the trajectory for different phases to make it more
| continuous. I think they also made other changes in engines
| among other things and a whole host of testing.
| franky47 wrote:
| So in Scott's words, a "fly safe" subroutine?
| The_Colonel wrote:
| Not considering such a basic error condition seems like a gross
| omission.
|
| This can't even come from the software engineering, but must be
| some kind of managerial failure (e.g. we're short on time, but
| have to report great progress to my boss, so skip this
| scenario).
| throwaway4220 wrote:
| No that's a bit unfair. ISRO, Israel, and Japan all had
| reasons for their failures that were mainly technical
| sph wrote:
| This is the software engineering version of "I am very
| badass", passing judgement on software at the cutting edge of
| science, while sitting at home writing React code.
| icemelt8 wrote:
| I am a React developer and I am in this picture and I don't
| like it
| AlbertCory wrote:
| In football journalism they call that Monday Morning
| Quarterbacking.
| RajT88 wrote:
| In any kind of aggressive manly kind of story, especially
| involving the military, they're "Keyboard Cowboys".
|
| Or some new ones I've heard kicked around:
|
| - Gravy Seals - 101st Chairborn - Chair Force pilots
|
| ...And so on...
| silisili wrote:
| You're mixing up terms here. Gravy seals is an insult
| term, used for typically out of shape people who are
| heavy into gun/militia/i-am-very-badass type culture.
|
| The latter two are just ribbing jokes about the Air
| Force, from the other branches usually. My old (Army)
| boss used to tell me to 'take off your air force gloves'
| if he ever saw me with my hands in my pockets.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Not having served (but I did help out on Operation Code
| for a couple years):
|
| "Chair Force" does sound like something they would say
| about armchair generals. No?
| silisili wrote:
| Absolutely. Just pointing out that one is strictly a
| pejorative, while the others would likely be viewed as
| 'someone in the airforce.' I think OP was wanting things
| more of the former, like gravy seals, meal team six,
| y'all queda, etc.
| subtra3t wrote:
| Writing code for something that flies into space is not
| nearly as easy as you think it is. Perhaps the next time you
| write a comment you could first develop the software which
| you're complaining about first. I'm sure it would be a
| trivial task for someone of your stature :)
| The_Colonel wrote:
| I'm not saying it is easy to handle. But this mode of
| failure could be expected and prepared for. It's not that
| uncommon that the spacecraft finds itself in a position
| which was not calculated.
|
| Or, are you saying that it's expected that the mission did
| not count with this scenario, and that future missions
| don't need to account for that either?
| MPSimmons wrote:
| Out of curiosity, how many space programs have you been
| involved with?
| xwdv wrote:
| It probably wasn't even the error. It could have been an
| accumulation of error % on some unbounded input.
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| > seems like such a gross omission.
|
| Almost all space mission code only _ever_ has the so-called
| 'happy path'. We rely on extremely tight mechanical and
| aerospace engineering tolerances to achieve that happy path.
|
| The Hubble Space Telescope's primary mirror grinding was off
| by a matter of micrometres, and resulted in blurry images.
|
| Consider all the Mars rovers. Imagine some wind gust threw
| the descending module off course, or a retro-rocket failed
| because of vibrations.
|
| Writing code for space missions isn't like writing a CRUD
| app. Developers can't just teleport to a space probe millions
| to billions of kilometres away to rectify errors and debug
| running code on the fly.
|
| For the record, the 'failure path' for Apollo 11 was to get
| the US President to announce to the world that the two
| astronauts would likely be marooned on the Moon. Apollo 13
| very nearly failed, too.
| taneq wrote:
| That can't still be the case these days, can it? Extremely
| tight mechanical and engineering tolerances are very
| expensive compared with merely 'very very' tight
| tolerances, and I'd imagine the difference between the two
| can be bridged with more intelligent software in place of
| "gyroscope + clock + maybe PID loop"?
| bregma wrote:
| The classic hardware engineering response of "we'll just
| fix it in software". Turns out fixing things in software
| is even more expensive because it's just so easy to make
| changes that a combinatoric number of changes sneak in.
| fidotron wrote:
| Yeah, this reads like two people defining happy path
| subtly differently: one is saying the happy path is
| anything within acceptable strictly defined mission
| parameters and tolerances, the other thinks it is the
| sequence of steps that is expected to successfully
| execute the mission without ever encountering an
| exceptional situation (which is the conventional software
| view of the term), but there are exceptional situations
| which may be covered in the specification of the mission
| and so "on the happy path".
|
| In the case the system strays outside mission success
| parameters then aborting could make sense. The question
| there looks to be if the success parameters were defined
| too narrowly - it sounds like an error in specification
| that prioritizes landing in the required area over the
| possibility of landing at all.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| When saying "we", do you mean you write code for the space
| missions?
|
| Writing only happy path code as a standard practice in the
| space sector seems quite absurd. You won't ever achieve
| absolute precision and errors do happen, yet it seems like
| systems recover most of the time.
|
| Recently, the antenna of Voyager 2 got misaligned, but it
| is expected to recover from that. That was only the last
| problem it encountered over its very long mission - and it
| managed to recover from all of those so far!
| abecedarius wrote:
| There was a NASA project to start developing flight
| software that's smarter in this kind of way, the Remote
| Agent. It got an award after flying, but if they
| continued that line of research I haven't heard about it.
| https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20000116204/downloads
| /20...
| [deleted]
| numpad0 wrote:
| Trying to hand roll a super robust AI software usually
| backfires. Emergency mode triggers right in the middle of
| the happy path and ruins your uh, a day if you're lucky.
| They know that, even I kinda know that.
| jvm___ wrote:
| Voyager 2 is already recovered, they waited until it was
| at the best possible (but still wrong orientation) and
| just yelled at it so that it heard, even with it being
| misaligned.
| jacobwilliamroy wrote:
| Wow I can't believe I didn't hear about this. It was all
| over the news when they broke it, so I figured it would
| be just as widely reported when they fixed it. It's been
| almost 3 weeks.
| SamBam wrote:
| There was definitely a prominent NYTimes story when it
| was fixed, that's how I heard about it.
| [deleted]
| dotnet00 wrote:
| That's probably why they haven't officially straight-up
| announced the issue.
|
| This wouldn't be the first time that a mission failed due to
| embarrassing failures in basic software practices (eg
| Starliner's initial software bugs emerging from a lack of
| integrated testing).
|
| Main difference is that you aren't triggering a billion
| overly sensitive nationalistic folks when you point out
| similar embarrassing errors in most other countries'
| programs. Eg the time NASA lost a probe due to
| miscommunicated units, the Apollo 1 disaster, the space
| shuttle disasters, or the tape around the wiring in
| Starliner, which was intended to be fire retardant actually
| turning out to be flammable...
|
| Hell, Japan's Hakuto-R also failed because the software's
| error detection was buggy, and they openly admitted as much
| without any bluster about how no one but other people with
| experience writing code for space probes can criticize them.
| mav3rick wrote:
| [dead]
| lenkite wrote:
| > That's probably why they haven't officially straight-up
| announced the issue.
|
| What do you mean by "they haven't officially straight-up
| announced the issue." ? They did so - _several_ times
| actually.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Edit:nvm, I'm wrong, see below
|
| They've given out vague explanations such as a software
| glitch, while holding the detailed post-mortem back
| claiming the obviously absurd excuse of national security
| concerns.
|
| This is counter to how they typically operate as well as
| how most other agencies/companies around the world
| operate these days, where they at least explain what went
| wrong. eg Hakuto-R's team explaining that their flight
| software thought the radar altimeter was malfunctioning
| when it wasn't, causing it to rely on the IMU and thus it
| thought the surface was much higher than it actually was.
| lenkite wrote:
| Might want to update your general knowledge. The ISRO
| Chief explained this in an interview. It wasn't just
| passed off as "software glitch" with no explanation.
|
| Chairman S Somanath has given three main reasons that led
| to the crash-landing of the Vikram lander on September 6,
| 2019 just minutes before the touchdown.
|
| The ISRO chairman said, "The primary issues were: One, we
| had five engines which were used to reduce the velocity
| (called retardation). These engines developed higher
| thrust. When such a higher thrust was happening, the
| errors on account of this differential were accumulated
| over some period. All the errors accumulated, which was
| slightly higher than what we expected.
|
| When it (lander) started to turn very fast, its ability
| to turn was limited by the software because we never
| expected such high rates to come. This was the second
| issue.
|
| The third reason for failure was the small site of 500m x
| 500m for landing of the lander."
|
| Rectifying those mistakes this time, the Isro chairman
| said, "This time we have kept an area of 4.2 km (along
| the track) x 2.5 km (width) for the landing site. So, it
| can land anywhere, so it doesn't limit you to target a
| specific point."
|
| Somanath said "instead of a success-based design, Isro
| has this time opted for a failure-based design" and
| focused on what all can fail and how to protect it and
| ensure a successful landing.
|
| "We looked at sensor failure, engine failure, algorithm
| failure, calculation failure. So, there are different
| failure scenarios calculated and programmed inside. We
| did new test beds for simulation, which was not there
| last time. This was to look at various failure
| scenarios," he explained.
|
| The ISRO chief said the Vikram now has additional solar
| panels on other surfaces to ensure that it generates
| power no matter how it lands.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Huh, I missed that, thanks for the info!
| 8thcross wrote:
| There was a JWST doc on netflix; that explained a NASA
| technique for Points of failure strategy. ISRO may be
| using similar.
| antran22 wrote:
| You are saying "gross omission" like this is some Python
| script, like they are skipping the else clause for a
| condition. Imagine trying to land a plane that is flying at
| Mach 2, with no direct control, only a video feed with 4
| seconds resolution, a bunch of sensors and a tank of fuel for
| retrograde burn to slow you down. Can you even fathom the
| number of scenarios that can happen. Your application may
| have 1 happy path and 2 sad path. Here you get only 1 happy
| path, a few not so happy path where your probe land sideway
| or just roll down a crater; and the rest of them are every
| other combinations of your probe's orientation and speed
| vector and collision location.
|
| Hell, you can run a few thousand simulators for every
| scenario you can think of during descent, including lost of
| burner, propellant leak, etc, and then during the actual
| descent a chip get burnt because of a stray cosmic ray. There
| will still be somebody on HN call you out for cutting corner.
| [deleted]
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| [flagged]
| wayFuLtH wrote:
| [flagged]
| seatac76 wrote:
| They also had an issue with the thrust gradient it could only
| do it increments in 20% which was too much of a change this one
| was finer which allowed for better control authority.
| ansible wrote:
| Link to the Scott Manley video - The Real Reason Why
| Chandrayaan 2 Crashed on the Moon:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ngVl6iO94c
| Rygian wrote:
| That's an example of failing to follow the "Aviate, Navigate,
| Communicate" rule of thumb.
| goku12 wrote:
| Could you elaborate how that applies here? Communication is
| out of the question - there's nothing the people on the
| ground can correct. And the lander apparently failed because
| it tried to navigate its way back to the designated landing
| site.
| vikingerik wrote:
| Communicate wasn't the important part, but you got it in
| your last sentence. It was trying to navigate over aviate -
| trying to get to its designated landing spot too hard so
| that it neglected/failed to stay airborne (spaceborne).
| goku12 wrote:
| That's much clearer. Aviate > Navigate. Thanks!
| dadadad100 wrote:
| If you crashed trying to ensure your antenna was optimally
| oriented then you chose "communicate" over "aviate". It's a
| stretch, but the point is to clearly define your priorities
| and stick to them, even in a panic
| m0llusk wrote:
| If anything they seem to have overcorrected for this. This
| landing path stopped with a near hover at around 800m, then a
| prolonged hover at 150m while the lander scoped the situation,
| then an extremely slow descent that allowed for corrections the
| whole way down. Very impressive.
| morepork wrote:
| If they have the fuel available, may as well be very
| conservative. Either burn the fuel on descent or have it sit
| in the tank forever on the lunar surface.
| hoseja wrote:
| Also incredibly inefficient.
| fit2rule wrote:
| [dead]
| tshaddox wrote:
| What numerator and denominator are you using to calculate
| the efficiency of an unmanned lunar soft landing mission?
| bagels wrote:
| It's a lot more efficient than having to send a fourth
| rocket.
| user_7832 wrote:
| A lot of things in the world trade inefficiencies for
| safety.
| hoseja wrote:
| I was surprised they had the propulsion budget for it.
| devnonymous wrote:
| Not only was the Chandrayaan 3 budget lesser than that of
| Chandrayaan 2, as a meme doing the rounds point out, it
| was lesser than the budgets of some Hollywood
| blockbusters like Interstellar. So yeah, safe to say they
| could have had the budget for more if necessary.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I don't think they're referring to literal money, but
| rather that the lander had enough fuel.
| Sharlin wrote:
| "Fuel budget", "mass budget", "payload budget", even
| "delta-v budget" are common terms in spaceflight and
| refer to how much of a valuable thing a spacecraft can
| carry given some pesky laws of physics [1], nothing to do
| with money (except insofar as more money would let you
| build a bigger spacecraft...)
|
| [1] https://www.kallmorris.com/columns/tyranny-of-the-
| rocket-equ...
| ansible wrote:
| It helps a lot that the Moon's gravity is about 1/6th of
| Earth's.
| [deleted]
| Zigurd wrote:
| This is one reason why low cost and efficiency are just a
| nice-to-have when it comes to to space exploration. Moreso
| the farther you go. A unique mission like a lunar polar
| landing should be conservatively engineered, where that is
| possible, on the first try. Early optimization and space
| exploration don't mix.
| layer8 wrote:
| First make it work, then make it right, last make it
| efficient.
| ansible wrote:
| Yes, it was a very conservative landing trajectory. But it is
| very, very difficult to get a hoverslam right the first time,
| or the second, or the third...
|
| I did like seeing the live images captured during descent, I
| also hope those get made into a video and posted online.
|
| Looking forward to the rover deployment too.
| rst wrote:
| This doesn't seem to have been a hoverslam, though -- the
| probe was hovering at, I think, 150 meters for quite some
| time, and then maintained a steady and slow rate of descent
| while still under power.
| ansible wrote:
| Yes, Chandrayaan-3 definitely did not performance a
| hoverslam, the landing was much more conservative than
| that. With a hoverslam, everything has to go exactly
| right. A valve that is slightly sticky can be enough to
| wreak everything.
| hoseja wrote:
| Incredibly Kerbal vibe. I think something like that happened to
| me when using MechJeb. (it even has a "land whenever" feature,
| which it was too late to use at that point)
| dotancohen wrote:
| That is just a testament to the incredible work of the Squad
| team. The Indian landing is not similar to Kerbal, rather,
| Kerbal is very very similar to the real experience. Amazing.
| raverbashing wrote:
| This applies to general software development but is especially
| true in this case
|
| While we think "this cannot ever happen" in a lot of cases it
| can, in ways you did not consider. Both for good and bad
| pjmorris wrote:
| I really ought to dig up a reference for this, but there are
| strong echoes from the past here. Margaret Hamilton (who
| coined the term 'software engineering' and can be seen
| standing next to a tall pile of green bar printouts of the
| Apollo software) brought her daughter to work one weekend
| during the Apollo program and she (daughter) fiddled with the
| buttons and caused an error condition. Hamilton, based on
| this, argued that the software should account for the
| possibility of mistakes. Management's view was that the
| highly-trained astronauts wouldn't make mistakes. In time,
| Hamilton prevailed, and was proven correct.
| monitron wrote:
| If you find a reference (or anyone does), please share.
| This is too good a story not to be told widely.
|
| Edit: here, at least, is a mention of the thing with her
| daughter in a Google Blog article:
| https://blog.google/products/maps/margaret-hamilton-
| apollo-1...
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| The recent japanese lander had something like this happen a
| while back. The altitude radar noticed a sudden 2km drop in
| ground-level, and the system assumed it was broken and
| stopped using that data.
|
| Turns out it just flew over a cliff edge that actually does
| that. Completely by accident.
| jvm___ wrote:
| They picked a new landing site late in the program and
| didn't get the topography near that site, or run enough
| combinations through the software in test.
| oaktowner wrote:
| While I worked at Google I once searched for "//this should
| never happen" in the code base.
|
| It was in there.
|
| A lot.
| rob74 wrote:
| In general software development it's usually not a problem if
| your program crashes, then you can fix the bug and run it
| again. If the thing that crashes is a lunar lander however,
| you should put a bit more effort into covering all the
| eventualities...
| [deleted]
| b800h wrote:
| [flagged]
| bakul wrote:
| From a Guardian article: A Foreign Office spokesperson said:
| "Since 2015 the UK has given no financial aid to the government
| of India. Most of our funding now is focused on business
| investments which help create new markets and jobs for the UK,
| as well as India. UK investments are also helping tackle shared
| challenges such as climate change."
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/mar/14/u...
| uh2010 wrote:
| 60m isn't quite enough. See
| https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/12/19/how-britain-st...
| vulcan01 wrote:
| I tend to consider the aid as reparations for the massive
| amounts of theft by the British East India Company and the
| British Raj.
| [deleted]
| 0xcafecafe wrote:
| The aid is not sent to the government but some chosen NGOs.
| India has said aid is not needed:
|
| https://icai.independent.gov.uk/html-version/uk-aid-to-
| india....
| b800h wrote:
| Yes, I think they described it as 'peanuts'. It's in the form
| of investment as well, but if they don't want it and we can't
| afford it, it's odd that it carries on. I'm sure it's a
| complex matter.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I mean, we certainly can afford it, far more so than e.g.
| PPE Medpro, but it's worth questioning what it's actually
| for. Which will require more granularity than "India",
| since it's not going to the Indian government.
| bwb wrote:
| Congrats to the team!!!
| zabana wrote:
| I wonder what else India could potentially achieve if they could
| retain their top talent.
|
| Congrats !
| soligern wrote:
| It's going to be very hard to brain drain a country of 1.4
| billion people. That doesn't even take into account the massive
| amount of money the diaspora sends back. The above is usually
| an argument people make when they don't want to let immigrants
| into their country.
| codegeek wrote:
| Don't think of Brain Drain as a lose lose situation. Lot of
| Indians who leave India contribute in many ways and in fact
| bring tons of knowledge and skills from the global world back
| to India (even if they don't live there physically). Not to
| mention that amount of money that is exchanged by Non Resident
| Indians (also known as NRIs).
|
| It is good that Indians are able to go aboard and bring a
| globalized knowledge back to India.
| itissid wrote:
| Congrats to all of the team at ISRO. Assuming the software
| development for these is non trivial; Its interesting that with
| the last mission(per Scott Manly) was designed to always select a
| spot(or more precisely a trajectory) and try hit it.
|
| What made them make that decision? Was it like "lets be as
| precise as we can because we want to get to the spot X because X
| is special" and thus "Lets let the software always compensate for
| any errors to get to X". I am assuming that even at this point
| they tested the software for extreme conditions. It is most
| likely that once this assumption was made the Software was built
| that way, i.e: "Lets test the Software can always correct for any
| issues to get to X with feedback(like thrust)". It trades off
| Safety for Accuracy(to hit X).
|
| This time the idea was "Lets select a trajectory to X" but this
| time "We will let the software prioritize safety(altitude, speed
| and heading) to be within norm once we start descending _towards_
| X ". And additionally "Not make any corrections if we are somehow
| too far off X if it exceeds safety limits". It trades off
| Accuracy(to hit X) for Safety.
| gourabmi wrote:
| If you understand Hindi, Gareeb Scientist has an amazing video
| about the landing algorithm issues of Chandrayaan-2
| https://youtu.be/4oUdD_QSgRs
| mandeepj wrote:
| > If you understand Hindi
|
| Video has captions
| justinclift wrote:
| The English captions are pretty decent too. :)
| mandeepj wrote:
| That's what I meant! I thought it was clear, at least to
| me.
| itake wrote:
| Is there a TLDW?
| ggop wrote:
| IIUC, the salient points are: - target area was very small
| (500m x 500m) for CY2. With CY3 they've made it bigger at
| 4km x 4km, allows for larger margin of error.
|
| - CY2 lander had limited leeway in fixing issues, by
| design. CY3 has more and has landed itself, no assistance
| from base.
|
| - CY2 lander had limited time to fix itself, apparently it
| was just a few seconds short of making it fine
| kensai wrote:
| Link to Manly's video?
| cosmotron wrote:
| Maybe this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP0GbRNGMLk
| mlni wrote:
| Probably this one: https://youtu.be/2ngVl6iO94c
| yencabulator wrote:
| Complete wild-ass guess: safe landing spots are hard to find,
| they knew X to be a larger region safe to land in (so small
| errors wouldn't matter), and didn't at the time have the more
| complex subsystem to find safe landing spots (!= X) on the fly
| based on where the lander happens to go.
| nothrowaways wrote:
| What would happen if they found water?
| robofanatic wrote:
| That would be icing on the cake, but the real success was to
| get there. It's a big step forward that'll help humanity, not
| just India.
| blackoil wrote:
| Nestle will buy SpaceX!!
| hdesh wrote:
| They might take a quick shower first. It was a long journey.
| robofanatic wrote:
| this joke would fly on reddit not here.
| [deleted]
| taveras wrote:
| This is incredible! Congratulations to everyone involved
| mnemotronic wrote:
| Congrats to all the engineers that made this possible. Practice
| makes perfect. Space travel is hard.
| merrvk wrote:
| Amazing, congratulations to all involved. Great day for the
| nation.
| yett wrote:
| Wow almost 4 million watching already
| Ayesh wrote:
| 5,8 million now. I have never seen _any_ live video with that
| many views.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| around 7.3 for the landing
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| Artistry121 wrote:
| Interesting how close politicians are with anything related to
| the moon. Nixon on TV as much as the astronauts in 69, Modi on TV
| here. Both during massive consolidations of power towards the
| leaders who also have major corruption scandals.
| altroz wrote:
| One step in science is leap forward for mankind
| bofadeez wrote:
| [flagged]
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Some may argue that such endeavors push technological
| boundaries, inspire global scientific collaboration, and
| prepare humanity for existential threats.
|
| It is widely known, not "some may argue".
|
| > However, considering the vast resources assigned for a
| mission with no direct immediate benefits to Earth's current
| problems, one could argue that our focus should be redirected
| towards addressing environmental crises, poverty, and global
| health challenges on Earth first
|
| What makes you think we can't tackle both?
| [deleted]
| bofadeez wrote:
| While I appreciate your engagement with the topic, I must
| point out that the notion that we can 'tackle both' is a
| dangerously simplistic perspective. The resources--both
| financial and intellectual--that are poured into space
| exploration are not infinite and come at the expense of
| urgent, life-saving initiatives here on Earth. To say it's
| 'widely known' only underscores the normalization of this
| skewed prioritization. We're not living in a utopia where all
| problems can be solved simultaneously; we're in a world where
| choices have consequences. The urgency of our Earth-bound
| crises doesn't afford us the luxury of romanticizing space
| exploration as if it's without trade-offs.
| password54321 wrote:
| It is almost like some fields try to drive off as many
| people as possible from lack of opportunity, to having
| extreme requirements and being driven by politics.
| Symbiote wrote:
| If you're looking for wasteful effort to direct elsewhere,
| I suggest reducing the money spent on social media,
| advertising, sport, movies and so on before space
| exploration.
| mdrzn wrote:
| Successfully landed! Great job!
| confuseddesi wrote:
| It's landed! Congratulations to India on this great achievement!
| illegalmemory wrote:
| I can see little kids waving flags and celebrating in my
| housing society! in 100s! Such a great feat and congratulations
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| Why such a long political speech and no views from onboard
| camera?
| [deleted]
| hoseja wrote:
| You can see the onboard camera view in the background
| sometimes. And the only truly hard thing about this is
| getting the political will for the funding, so.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| Is it still updating? Was hard to tell. But just 30 seconds
| of that would be great
| hoseja wrote:
| Actually not sure, the last image I caught didn't look
| particularly "landed".
| ape4 wrote:
| So many words about "success" - how about some goodies?!
|
| (To be clear, I am happy for India, just think it could be
| presented better)
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| Right - they had a great camera running - let's enjoy a few
| rolling frames of the same spot showing touchdown area and
| systems working
| shri_krishna wrote:
| > Why such a long political speech
|
| ISRO is primary arm of the Department of Space which is
| headed by the Prime Minister. So in essence, the Prime
| Minister is the boss. It is not an independent federal agency
| like NASA.
| factorialboy wrote:
| If my understanding is correct, did the PM in his speech
| promise to fund a future mission to Saturn?
| shri_krishna wrote:
| I am sorry I did not pay close attention to his speech.
| But in the subsequent speech, I think the ISRO chief did
| talk about a Venus Orbiter Mission.
| shubhamkrm wrote:
| IIRC, he mentioned missions to the Sun, Venus and a
| manned space mission.
| goku12 wrote:
| I really wish to see a lander mission to Venus. Doesn't
| look like anybody other than Russia has done it - that
| too nearly 40 years ago. The environment is so extreme
| that the technology - especially electronics - would have
| to be radically different. The data is also likely to be
| extremely interesting.
| basementcat wrote:
| One of the probes from Pioneer Venus 2 (launched by NASA
| in 1978) briefly sent back data after impacting the
| surface of Venus.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Venus_Multiprobe
| goku12 wrote:
| That's an interesting outcome! Thanks!
| layer8 wrote:
| Because the whole endeavor was financed for its political
| impact.
| samstave wrote:
| They dont want us to see the little green UAPs that closely
| monitor what we are doing :-)
| jp42 wrote:
| I absolutely agree that they should immediately release data
| & images for more technically inclined section. However the
| reason for speeches is entire nation is watching this event
| across all age group, most of them don't understand technical
| things, I would say even image of moon surface wont connect
| to most of them. Basically speeches is the way to connect &
| artists impression images. To give some example, people thing
| entire rocket goes to moon, one of the politician was wishing
| "passengers" on the spacecraft, reputed news channel claiming
| "breaking new" that there wont be delay in landing as if we
| can push breaks like in car or traffic on the way. So you get
| the point, to connect to masses they are speaking in language
| that everyone understand
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Unfortunately all the national space agencies seem to suffer
| from this. Both NASA and ESA also seem to think that people
| are tuning in to watch the smarmy politician talk rather than
| the robot making its way to space/landing on another body.
|
| Had the same issue with JWST for example.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| That was very memorable- grainy photos projected on a wall
| while nasa admin (old white guy) briefed Biden? Jwst had a
| pretty well planned out program for first images including
| events and it just got crushed.
| sva_ wrote:
| I can imagine that this is a HN-bubble thing. Most people
| would probably get bored from just seeing some live
| footage.
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| SpaceX livestreams didn't get super popular for having a
| politician on them. They got popular for showing exactly
| what's happening with enthusiastic presenters narrating
| it.
|
| Most people find speeches and politicians boring. They
| wanna see rockets flying, robots moving, etc.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| "enthusiastic presenters narrating it."
|
| I seriously hate their narrators and all the cheering.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Last I heard, their narrators were regular SpaceX
| employees with day jobs. So somewhat understandable they
| have an emotional stake in mission success.
| [deleted]
| sph wrote:
| That is condescending nonsense. Pretty much everybody
| would prefer to see rocks from outer space than hearing
| politicians congratulating themselves and the unity of
| our country.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Yeah it's more likely this is a case of wants of decision
| makers being prioritized over wants of the audience. This
| event is an avalanche of prestige. Of course politicians
| want to soak it up.
| sriku wrote:
| Nope. Same reaction from a wide variety of people
| including my wife who's not in tech and doesn't know what
| HN or YCombinator are. She was like "let the team speak
| already!"
| ismayilzadan wrote:
| You wife probably a highly educated person sharing
| similar views in life like you
| mcpackieh wrote:
| So what you're saying is you'd need to be an uneducated
| imbecile to prefer politicians speaking to live space
| footage.
|
| I think you're selling uneducated imbeciles short; surely
| even they prefer the space footage. Only the politicians
| doing the speaking prefer themselves.
| Eddygandr wrote:
| SpaceX livestream much more mundane things with tens of
| thousands of viewers
| daveguy wrote:
| 10s of thousands. That has to be some kind of record.
| Eddygandr wrote:
| Not at all! Although some of them will be people like me
| having it on the side monitor day dreaming while they
| write CRUD :)
| dotnet00 wrote:
| The first launch of SpaceX's Crew Dragon with astronauts
| on-board holds the record for the most concurrent
| internet viewers on a stream tracked by NASA at 10
| million.
|
| Of course if you drop the internet requirement, Apollo 11
| still is by far the most live viewed at 600 million
| viewers.
| daveguy wrote:
| That makes sense for Apollo 11. I expect that one won't
| be beat until we land people on Mars. I figured SpaceX
| had some much bigger viewerships than 10's of thousands.
| (I've watched several myself.) That number must have been
| on the more (now) regular things like vertical landing
| the same rocket for the Nth time! Thank you for the
| update.
| zapdrive wrote:
| To his credit, Narendra Modi has increased ISRO's budget a
| lot. Many years they have received more than promised! So
| he kind of deserves to rake in the limelight.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| It's also because these agencies are reliant of politicians
| and government institutions for funding. So there is a
| balance between "showing what the public actually cares
| about" and "keeping this guy happy so we can keep up
| funding / congressional support / etc."
| sirius87 wrote:
| I believe the chairman of the space agency also used the
| Prime Minister's mention of future projects to note it as
| confirmation that those projects will indeed happen i.e. be
| funded. That was pretty smart at @ 01:07:00 in the video.
|
| So it's good to see it work both ways.
| pyeri wrote:
| On the other hand, political speeches on such occasions go
| down as most remembered historically. The infamous quote
| "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." was
| obviously said by some politician! (or at least with non-
| technical motives)
| granularity wrote:
| Here's the actual story about that quote: https://en.wiki
| pedia.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong#First_Moon_walk
| flavius29663 wrote:
| Also, "we're going to the moon not because it's easy, but
| because it's hard"
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The full version of that section is more amusing but
| forgotten
|
| >> _But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our
| goal? And they may as well ask: why climb the highest
| mountain? Why 35 years ago fly the Atlantic? Why does
| Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon {applause}
| We choose to go to the moon... {applause} We choose to go
| to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not
| because they are easy, but because they are hard --
| because that goal will serve to organize and measure the
| best of our energies and skills -- because that challenge
| is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to
| postpone, and one we intend to win. (And the others too)_
|
| (as spoken and delivered at Rice University in Houston,
| Texas, referencing the Rice-Texas American football
| rivalry, where Texas is a 10x larger university)
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QXqlziZV63k&t=9m22s
|
| https://www.jfklibrary.org/sites/default/files/archives/J
| FKP...
|
| Congratulations to ISRO (and all of India) for doing not
| the thing that was easy, but the thing that was hard and
| valuable!
| georgeecollins wrote:
| I think it is a sign of habitual cynicism that you assume
| "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." was
| said by a politician. I think people feel like they are
| defending themselves from being manipulated by not
| accepting anything on its face as sincere. Sometimes a
| pipe is just a pipe.
| lioeters wrote:
| I think the saying goes, sometimes a cigar is just a
| cigar. And knowing Freud, you know it's not just a cigar.
| adolph wrote:
| > The infamous quote "One small step for man, one giant
| leap for mankind."
|
| What makes the quote _in_ famous rather than just famous?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Could just be a misuse of infamous but could just as well
| be intended to refer to the fact that Man and Mankind
| mean the same. You need an article in front to transform
| "One small step for Man" into "One small step for a man"
| to refer to Neil himself stepping.
| veonik wrote:
| "One small step for a man" is what he actually said, I
| think, or so I've heard. Apparently the "a" was lost due
| to radio interference.
| bluGill wrote:
| Wikipedia (see elsewhere for link) has good coverage of
| that. "A" was intended to be said, but when humans say
| lines like that it is common to miss a word here and
| there. There is no way to know for sure if he said it and
| the technology of the time didn't pick it up, or if he
| misstated his own quote.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Unless you were being sarcastic, it's because people
| don't know what the word infamous means and think it
| means "extremely famous".
| adolph wrote:
| No sarcasm, just wondering. Armstrong could have been
| cancelled or something. I might have missed the Two
| Minutes Hate [0] when he or lunar exploitation was on.
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate
| dotnet00 wrote:
| They want to go down in the history books the way JFK's
| "we choose to go to the Moon" did without experiencing
| the "mind-blowing" event afterwards that made the speech
| historical.
| mrtksn wrote:
| One of the most populous countries has become a strong
| contender in space exploration. Hopefully, it will inspire so
| many more Indians to push it further and elevate the humanity,
| just like USA and USSR once did. It's great.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Also here come the British news lamenting about how India is
| wasting money instead of focusing on their poor. Slumdog
| Millionaire mentality.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| NASA often gets the same treatment, particularly so during
| the Apollo program when they were getting a lot of money.
| It doesn't matter the country, a lot of people don't see
| the sense in spending a single pence on space.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jul/14/apollo-11-c
| i...
| somenameforme wrote:
| One of my favorite quotes is, "When a wise man points at
| the moon the imbecile examines the finger." So pertinent,
| but also with so absurdly much imagery, symbolism, and
| metaphor packed into just a few words. But perhaps the
| most remarkable thing is that that quote's 2500 years
| old. Technology changes so much, but we largely seem to
| be the exact same people we were even thousands of years
| in the past.
| GordonS wrote:
| Also the British news when money is spent on the poor:
| "Scamming Scavs with 17 Kids Showered with Tax-Payer's
| Money".
|
| Most British news outlets really are a scourge on our
| society.
| samstave wrote:
| They dont want us to see the little green UAPs that closely
| monitor what we are doing :-)
| __void wrote:
| very good, congratulations on the achievement!
| [deleted]
| hojinkoh wrote:
| Congratulations to India!
| zerojames wrote:
| Congratulations to India! Every time I read of launches to
| space, I think (and sometimes say aloud) "wow!" It is awesome
| in the traditional sense of the world.
| uwagar wrote:
| [flagged]
| kordlessagain wrote:
| Now it needs to find the alien base hidden at the South Pole!
| All joking aside, great work by this team!
| bambax wrote:
| [flagged]
| jshmrsn wrote:
| I get the point that the US already put people on the moon...
| but how can you possibly make the leap that there can be no
| scientific value to additional unmanned laboratories and
| instruments landing on the moon? Especially since this
| represents increasing the number of countries who can
| contribute to this scientific endeavor? If the US elects a
| president who is not interested in lunar science or has
| economic problems, then the whole world must wait for the US
| to decide to resume lunar missions?
|
| An overview of the scientific instruments onboard:
|
| " Lander payloads: Chandra's Surface Thermophysical
| Experiment (ChaSTE) to measure the thermal conductivity and
| temperature; Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) for
| measuring the seismicity around the landing site; Langmuir
| Probe (LP) to estimate the plasma density and its variations.
| A passive Laser Retroreflector Array from NASA is
| accommodated for lunar laser ranging studies.
|
| Rover payloads: Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and
| Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) for deriving the
| elemental composition in the vicinity of landing site.
|
| Chandrayaan-3 consists of an indigenous Lander module (LM),
| Propulsion module (PM) and a Rover with an objective of
| developing and demonstrating new technologies required for
| Inter planetary missions. The Lander will have the capability
| to soft land at a specified lunar site and deploy the Rover
| which will carry out in-situ chemical analysis of the lunar
| surface during the course of its mobility. The Lander and the
| Rover have scientific payloads to carry out experiments on
| the lunar surface. The main function of PM is to carry the LM
| from launch vehicle injection till final lunar 100 km
| circular polar orbit and separate the LM from PM. Apart from
| this, the Propulsion Module also has one scientific payload
| as a value addition which will be operated post separation of
| Lander Module."
|
| https://www.isro.gov.in/Chandrayaan3_Details.html
| bambax wrote:
| > _I get the point that the US already put people on the
| moon_
|
| I didn't mention the US and I'm not from the US (I'm
| French). Humanity landed on the moon. Over 50 years ago.
|
| If a country today built a 1969 computer I wouldn't marvel
| at the achievement.
|
| And yes, sure, there are probably many instruments on
| board. But you can tell from the video -- and all the
| excitement here as well -- that this is mainly political
| and politically motivated.
|
| > _If the US elects a president who is not interested in
| lunar science or has economic problems, then the whole
| world must wait for the US to decide to resume lunar
| missions?_
|
| Or maybe do something else with our limited time and
| ressources than trying _again_ to analyze the lunar surface
| and pretend it will be useful? While planting friggin '
| flags all over the place?
| legends2k wrote:
| South pole is unexplored and no one has ever landed
| there, manned or unmanned. Exploring the unexplored isn't
| science?
| bambax wrote:
| The moon is NOT unexplored. That's my point actually.
| Should we explore every inch of it?
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Of course we should? I'm surprised you think otherwise.
| It's like arguing that we shouldn't have explored the
| Americas because the Earth was not unexplored.
|
| The Lunar poles have lots of scientific value,
| particularly for long term habitation, as you can have
| both permanently shadowed craters with water ice in them
| and permanently lit areas providing a reliable source of
| power.
| moopie wrote:
| You can use the "isn't there anything better to do"
| towards literally anything
|
| Why not this though
| bambax wrote:
| Okay, this is true, but the cost/benefit ratio is a way
| to evaluate "things to do". Landing on the moon is an
| immense effort that doesn't bring much.
|
| I wouldn't care one way or the other but what gets me is
| we're sold this as a scientific pursuit, while it's
| obvious it's just nationalistic bombast.
| pipo234 wrote:
| Congrats to India!
| user_7832 wrote:
| It's brilliant! I think most Indians were really disappointed
| after the last failure, so it's really reassuring that despite
| shooting further we were successful!
| bandyaboot wrote:
| Just makes success that much sweeter. Well done India!
| ojosilva wrote:
| If you may: The peacock has landed! (Indian national bird)
| ipunchghosts wrote:
| it landed sucessfully!
| mathieuh wrote:
| Wait did it land while they were showing us Modi's face? Why
| didn't they show the camera feed?
| throwaway_0823 wrote:
| The guy is a megalomanic. The ISRO official who announced the
| successful landing even asked Modi to "bless us"! No doubt a
| diktat from Modi.
| shri_krishna wrote:
| > The guy is a megalomanic
|
| The Prime Minister is the head of Department of Space, whose
| primary arm is ISRO. He is the boss. Literally every Prime
| Minister of India has attended ISRO launches and addressed
| ISRO after success/failure of launches.
|
| > asked Modi to "bless us"
|
| You probably aren't Indian but this is quite common in India
| where we seek blessings from elders.
| throwaway_0823 wrote:
| > He is the boss.
|
| No, he's just an elected representative of the people, a
| government servant.
|
| > You probably aren't an Indian
|
| I am an Indian.
|
| Modi, desperate to project himself, is overruling the
| President (who is the supreme commander of the armed
| forces), gotten himself "coronated" in the new Parliament
| building, gotten his picture put on every citizen's COVID
| vaccination certificate (as if he has invented the
| vaccine).
| mauryashivam wrote:
| He has to put his face on all positive news coming from
| the country. Anyways happy for ISRO and a step in better
| understanding Moon (chanda mama).
| shri_krishna wrote:
| > No, he's just an elected representative of the people,
| a government servant.
|
| And he still is the boss of DoS whose arm is ISRO. You
| can cry all you want, it won't change facts.
|
| > Modi, desperate to project himself, is overruling the
| President (who is the supreme commander of the armed
| forces), gotten himself "coronated" in the new Parliament
| building, gotten his picture put on every citizen's COVID
| vaccination certificate (as if he has invented the
| vaccine).
|
| Nonsense.
| goodbyesf wrote:
| > No, he's just an elected representative of the people,
| a government servant.
|
| Yes. The elected leader is the boss of the executive
| branch of government. One doesn't negate the other.
| mzs wrote:
| PM is not the boss of the executive according to the
| constitution*. The fact that traditionally and more
| recently the President follows the whim of the PM does
| not negate the text that identifies the elected President
| as the head of the executive.
|
| * https://www.mea.gov.in/Images/pdf1/Part5.pdf
| oxygen_crisis wrote:
| I can't think of any other space mission that devoted one
| of the control room screens to projecting the head of
| state's face throughout the landing...
| shri_krishna wrote:
| That might have been an issue with the control room
| getting the timing of the live feed wrong. No reason to
| read into it more than that. We have had previous
| missions where the Prime Minister's live feed was beamed
| after the event concluded
| seatac76 wrote:
| The speech after had a weird order I was expecting ISRO to
| speak first, thought that was not needed but idk
| shri_krishna wrote:
| Because: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37235089
| seatac76 wrote:
| I cracked up at the little flag waving by who I assume was
| the prime minister/president. The duality is interesting
| serious Indian scientists doing great work and a politician
| on the screen for no good reason. Here's to the tribe of
| scientist prevailing and taking the country forward, prob
| true everywhere now that I think of it.
| shri_krishna wrote:
| > The duality is interesting serious Indian scientists
| doing great work and a politician on the screen for no
| good reason
|
| One can say the same about President Nixon talking to the
| Astronauts who landed on the Moon. At least here ISRO
| comes directly under the Prime Minister of India while
| NASA does not come under the President of USA.
| seatac76 wrote:
| Ah I see. Did not know that.
| [deleted]
| blackoil wrote:
| :) You know the answer.
| BtM909 wrote:
| They showed the animation. Maybe in case something went wrong,
| they didn't want to broadcast that?
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| Why? No transparency at all. Show me the images and the video
| of the Moon.
|
| Every kid today can create an animation.
| subtra3t wrote:
| Maybe you were lagging? PM Modi's face wasn't displayed at the
| exact moment it landed, but it was shown before and after that
| moment.
| [deleted]
| mzs wrote:
| No, the feed on the right switched to the animation from the
| lander's view at 19m above the surface.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| It landed! Yay!
| rhuru wrote:
| This is a big achievement for India. Not just in space
| exploration point of view but the side effects of such projects
| are more interesting.
|
| Dozens of major private companies focused on making this success
| making various spare parts including steel cranes by Tata steel,
| special alloys of Mishra Dhatu Nigam (The Alloy Company), wings
| by L&T Aero etc. etc. I know some people here and they were so
| proud and focused on "excellence" which I think is often missing
| in what we Indians normally do.
|
| Space programs are important because of precision required. It
| created a discipline and desire for perfection not just for ISRO
| but for all their suppliers and vendors. Hope this habit spreads.
| soligern wrote:
| There are some very interesting, and arguably more challenging
| missions coming up including a Venus orbiter, manned space
| flight and a Martian lander. This should really help solidify
| the manufacturing space around this.
| [deleted]
| the-dude wrote:
| If the lander flipped over and exploded, it seems nobody would
| have noticed.
| balozi wrote:
| I don't know much about landing extraterrestrial missions, but
| I would imagine that the moment of touchdown is exactly the
| moment everyone in the control room should be keenly paying
| attention to their assignment instead of jumping up to
| celebrate (or at least try not to distract those that are).
| Because if that thing sunk into a pool of moon water or landed
| on top of another lunar lander, it would be 15 minutes before
| anyone realized. Just a minor layman observation.
|
| Anyhow congratulations to this team and to the people of this
| great nation.
| goku12 wrote:
| They would have a loss of telemetry that screams of failure. I
| don't see the possibility that they wouldn't notice.
| robofanatic wrote:
| That is exactly what happened last time during Chandrayaan 2.
| ISRO noticed and fixed the issue and launched Chandrayaan 3
| deltree7 wrote:
| [dead]
| vidanay wrote:
| YAAAAAAAYYYY!
| BtM909 wrote:
| And we have touchdown!
| deltree7 wrote:
| [dead]
| dirtyid wrote:
| Fantastic job. A lot of inspiration for 75M.
| yogrish wrote:
| Chandrayaan-3, Successfully Soft landed. Amazing feat by ISRO.
| Kudos to all engineers behind this.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Landed successfully!
| vbezhenar wrote:
| When it's going to land anyway?
| ethbr1 wrote:
| 18:04 IST
|
| 13:34 BST
|
| 08:34 EDT
| Symmetry wrote:
| Landing on the Moon isn't easy and making it on the second try is
| pretty good, it took the USSR tons of tries to finally get a good
| soft landing. And recently we've seen groups from Russia, Japan,
| and Israel try to land softly on the moon without success.
| Ayesh wrote:
| If I read correctly, this is now the most watched live video on
| YouTube! Congratulations to India and the team on this fantastic
| feat of an achievement.
| manojlds wrote:
| I thought it was 8M earlier. I didn't see this cross 6M though.
| rocknor wrote:
| It definitely crossed 8M, but not sure if it crossed the
| previous highest (Felix Baumgartner freefall) which is also
| around 8M.
| goodbyesf wrote:
| > If I read correctly, this is now the most watched live video
| on YouTube!
|
| Which is disappointing. India should have their own video
| sharing/livestream platform.
| t3estabc wrote:
| [dead]
| vivegi wrote:
| Landed successfully at the Lunar south pole area.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| 30 minutes of happy faces but not a single broadcast image of the
| lander.
| jayjpatel wrote:
| Congratulations ISRO!!! No road too long, no dream too big.
| aprasadh wrote:
| 4.1 million watching live on youtube. Wow!
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| 5.8 million now.
| nullcipher wrote:
| 8m
| sidcool wrote:
| A T20 cricket match has 21 million peak views. So still low
| I would say.
| actuator wrote:
| More people are interested in sports than space landings,
| who would have thought
| sidcool wrote:
| I like the sarcasm, but just wanted to put a perspective
| on numbers. India has a very different scale when
| compared to other countries.
| dizhn wrote:
| People watch sports live because spoilers ruin the
| experience. There isn't much replay value either - except
| maybe as highlights.
| gabereiser wrote:
| Congratulations to everyone involved. This is amazing. India has
| come so far in its space program. Leaps and bounds. It's
| astonishing to witness. While SpaceX has the look - Chandrayaan
| has the function. Now get Jeb back home!!
| distcs wrote:
| Can someone help me understand this Wikipedia article section:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan_programme#List_of_...
|
| Check the row for Chandrayaan-2. Why does it say Unsuccessful
| landing but main mission success and extended missing ongoing?
|
| What exactly are main mission and extended mission and how can
| they succeed or be ongoing when the landing has been
| unsuccessful?
| srnayak wrote:
| Chandrayaan 2 had 3 payloads. The lander crashed along with
| rover. But the orbiter is still functioning. It has 8
| scientific instruments on board for various observations of
| lunar surface.
| mryall wrote:
| The Chandrayaan-2 mission had an orbiter, which is still
| operational, as well as the lander which crashed.
| [deleted]
| haunter wrote:
| Narendra Modi has landed on the Moon!
| herunan wrote:
| His face was bigger than the landing feed!
| Eddygandr wrote:
| Please please let this bring on a second space race! I want
| humans on Mars during my lifetime!
| gautamsomani wrote:
| Yeah! Me too!
| yett wrote:
| Did the successful landing just crash Hacker News?
| drones wrote:
| yeeep
| user_7832 wrote:
| Haha also wondered the same
| [deleted]
| actuator wrote:
| Congratulations to ISRO! Hopefully some interesting data and
| findings come from it and then Gaganyaan next!
| la64710 wrote:
| Is there a video somewhere from within the spacecraft at the
| exact moment of touchdown?
| mymacbook wrote:
| Not yet, closest option now is a computer animation synced with
| the confirmation of touchdown at minute 44 of the video. :(
| mzs wrote:
| At least there are these five images from two more cameras:
| https://twitter.com/isro/status/1694360664675127726
| la64710 wrote:
| Nice
| weaksauce wrote:
| about 45 min into the video in the main article
| engineer_22 wrote:
| No, that's a computer render. From what I can tell, there is
| no onboard video
| [deleted]
| sgt wrote:
| SpaceX has spoiled us...
| mfrw wrote:
| What makes this a "WoWW!", is not that this is the first time
| humans sent something to the moon, but when one factors in the
| budget relative to others.
|
| Although, I do not have reference for what the exact budget
| was/is.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| great to see!
|
| Congratulations, India!
| thyrox wrote:
| Not asking rhetorically but why is this a big deal? Is it because
| it's going to the south pole? What are some other benefits to be
| gained from this?
| mmx4332 wrote:
| This may not be a popular question, but given the amount of
| poverty in India, is a space program really the best
| expenditure?
|
| As a geek, I love the space program.
|
| As a human, I don't think it makes sense given the poverty.
| pietro72ohboy wrote:
| A nation isn't a singular-minded entity; rather, it comprises
| diverse citizens who assume various roles and contribute
| uniquely to global improvement. Just because they've
| successfully landed a rover on the moon doesn't imply the
| abandonment of all efforts to alleviate poverty.
|
| Honestly, why does the recognition of India's positive
| accomplishments always seem overshadowed by the specter of
| poverty and other challenges? Did the Americans eradicate
| every societal issue before embarking on their lunar mission?
| Indians should be proud -- this accomplishment is truly
| remarkable and signifies positive societal strides toward a
| better collective future. Such achievements ignite hope, and
| progress is fundamentally built upon hope, regardless of the
| symbolic origins it might stem from.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| An alternative perspective to consider, what happens to all
| the skilled engineers interested in and capable of working on
| advanced technologies like those intended for space if a
| country decides to put all other development on hold to
| singlemindedly focus on eradicating poverty?
|
| What would happen to the next generations of talented
| potential engineers? What value would there be to pursuing an
| advanced education? Since obviously a space program isn't the
| only "luxury" that should be put on hold if poverty exists!
|
| The talent would all leave and the next generations would be
| less incentivized to pursue the very kinds of careers that
| help a country develop.
| dharmit wrote:
| Two points I'm aware of:
|
| 1. No one has managed to make a landing on the moon's South
| Pole yet.
|
| 2. Since the South Pole doesn't get any sunlight at all, it's
| believed that there's a possibility of discovering ice/water
| there.
| hoseja wrote:
| * bottoms of craters on the South Pole.
|
| Some places there get eternal sunlight instead:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_of_eternal_light
| goku12 wrote:
| Assuming that CY3 landed somewhere it gets eternal
| sunlight, I can see how this can be an issue. Many landers
| and rovers have horizontal solar panels - they would work
| as long as the sun is reasonably above the horizon.
| However, the sun is always going to be near the horizon at
| the poles. That would not only require the solar panel to
| be mounted vertically, but also be oriented towards the sun
| somehow.
| subtra3t wrote:
| - Only 3 other countries have landed on the moon
|
| - Its landing on the south pole where nobody's ever landed
| before
|
| - Russia failed to land on the moon a week or two back
| mkl wrote:
| It's a big deal because India has never landed on the moon
| before; only three nations have.
| goku12 wrote:
| This is the first time India soft-landed anything outside of
| Earth. That by itself is a big deal. Soft-landing guidance on
| a body without atmosphere is much more complex than launch
| guidance.
| rospaya wrote:
| > With this mission, India became the first to impact the
| Lunar south pole and the 7th nation to reach the lunar
| surface.
|
| Wiki article for Chandrayaan-1 from 2008.
| mkl wrote:
| India became the 4th to land successfully with
| Chandrayaan-3 just now. Others have crashed or deliberately
| impacted.
| goku12 wrote:
| Impactors and landers are classified differently. So both
| your comment and the one you were replying to are correct.
| taneq wrote:
| They've made a controlled landing on the moon. Just because
| it's been done a few times before, ever, doesn't make this a
| small accomplishment.
| mrphoebs wrote:
| Mission to unexplored south pole of the moon and investigating
| the presence of surface water at the bottom of craters that
| don't receive sunlight.
|
| Simultaneously capability development and demonstration for
| ISRO
| veave wrote:
| Indians are numerous and they display a lot of patriotic pride,
| which "inflates" these news, especially when they are in
| websites/platforms that have a voting score.
| lawgimenez wrote:
| The mission is very impressive, regardless of nationality.
| Come on.
| ghoomketu wrote:
| So if this were another country like Netherlands or Japan,
| according to you this would be less important? I really don't
| think so.
| robofanatic wrote:
| This is nowhere near "inflated"
|
| check this out https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&p
| refix=false&qu...
| abhayhegde wrote:
| So the mission alone is unimpressive in your opinion? If you
| were to weed out who did this and only focus on the what,
| would you not have an inch of wonder and applaud the efforts?
| veave wrote:
| That's not what my comment says. Personally I don't know
| how impressive or unimpressive the mission is since I am
| not interested in space exploration and I know almost
| nothing about it.
| luminati wrote:
| You know nothing about space exploration and yet you were
| compelled to post your earlier drivel?
| legends2k wrote:
| Though you've no interest in space exploration you
| qualify to pass judgement on how inflated a space
| exploration related post, how?
| veave wrote:
| Because what I'm mentioning is a phenomenon that occurs
| in all Indian-related submissions regardless of content.
| ajnin wrote:
| This is a big deal because since 1976, only China has (edit:
| had!) managed to land something successfully on the Moon. And
| also space exploration is cool in general.
| swader999 wrote:
| Aliens. They are out there somewhere.
| nuker wrote:
| Nah. Escaped nazis.
| cpursley wrote:
| This was a fun movie (which I assume you're referencing):
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034314/
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| I'd be curious if it's at all interesting from a technical
| perspective. It was impressive in the 60s and 70s because a lot
| of new things needed to be discovered and understood to make it
| happen. But now a days.. are there really technical aspects
| that would not be covered in a typical engineering course?
|
| I get it's very expensive and hence difficult to pull off - but
| this makes it comes off as mostly nationalism and a big display
| of disposable income (which for a country with so much poverty
| is .. something)
| dotnet00 wrote:
| What typical engineering course covers the design of reliable
| systems which work mostly autonomously in environments with
| huge temperature variations, vacuum, inaccessibility for
| repair, significant radiation, mass constraints, sensor
| limitations etc?
|
| Designing stuff for space involves a lot of challenges that
| typical engineering does not.
|
| Plus, while the US and USSR may have done the necessary
| technical work, India doesn't get most of that knowledge and
| thus has to learn the lessons itself.
| z3phyr wrote:
| A lot of poor people were genuinely happy and inspired today.
| albert_e wrote:
| The budget with which this mission was accomplished is
| something.
|
| Less than a typical hollywood movie budget.
| phanimahesh wrote:
| The money used on these programmes doesn't burn up, it gets
| recirculated. As an Indian I consider this a pretty good use
| of tax payer money.
| luminati wrote:
| Sorry to say but no contrarian thought in your comment.
| legends2k wrote:
| Technically no one has landed in the crater ridden South pole
| on the dark side of the moon. Scientifically it's useful to
| course these uncharted parts of the moon both for water/ice
| and mineral composition.
|
| I don't see how poverty comes into play here: every nation
| had similar issues when they were doing space exploration.
| They are two unrelated spheres. Solving one doesn't mean the
| other won't be
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| We get to see more images of the Moon's surface. In a
| previously unexplored region.
|
| How is that not a big deal?
| goku12 wrote:
| A look at the previous lunar missions [1] should give an idea.
| There have been 7 lander missions since 1976 (not including
| impactors):
|
| - 3 by China: All success
|
| - 1 by Japan (along with a rover from UAE): Failed
|
| - 1 by Israel: Failed
|
| - 1 by Russia: Failed
|
| - 2 by India: Previous one failed. This one succeeded
|
| I can see why the entire world would be excited by something
| like this. I hope that there will be routine landings by
| different players and that the landing guidance would be
| perfected.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_the_Moon#M...
| The_Colonel wrote:
| Besides what others said, it gets extra spice from the fact
| Russia failed to do the same just days ago.
| goku12 wrote:
| Russian space program is a shadow of what it once was. Their
| history is full of daring missions and extraordinary
| achievements. I wish they would engage in a space race than
| in a war.
| tjpnz wrote:
| Might be time for China to reconsider its role with Russia
| in future manned moon missions. Any prestige the Russian
| program once had has long since faded, even ground
| operations at Baikonur are now at risk with equipment being
| impounded by bailiffs from Kazakhstan to service billions
| in debt.
| ironyman wrote:
| Russia retains an (rapidly diminishing) edge in certain
| areas of space. One of them is engine design. China is
| still keen on buying the best Soviet engines, namely
| Energia's RD-170 and its variants but of course Russia is
| less than keen on parting ways with them.
|
| Even CALT, the major launch vehicle provider in China,
| admits it will be well into the late 2020s/early 2030s
| before they can get an engine as good as the RD-170.
| Their YF-130, while technically very good according to
| recent tests, is still a bit less efficient. Think about
| that, a 40 year gap. Aerospace is hard.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-170
| cpursley wrote:
| Not as "cool" as the SpaceX stuff, but Angara, Amur,
| Soyuz-5, Soyuz-7 are all in the works.
| chpatrick wrote:
| I'm surprised that the Atlas V's first stage has these
| Russian engines.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Using Russian engines, like the ISS collaboration was an
| attempt by the US to keep soviet rocket scientists in
| business in civilian roles so they wouldn't be
| incentivized to spread around the world proliferating
| ICBM tech.
|
| In the process the US paid a huge price (decay of
| domestic design capability) and it's debatable if the
| goal was achieved.
| chpatrick wrote:
| Very interesting, do you know where I can read more about
| that?
| goku12 wrote:
| Coincidentally, China's first Mars (orbiter) mission
| Yinghuo-1 failed because it was hitchhiking on the
| Russian orbiter Fobos-Grunt that failed in an Earth
| orbit. India launched an orbiter soon afterwards and
| became the first country to get it right in the first
| attempt.
| cpursley wrote:
| American space program is a shadow of what it once was.
| Their history is full of daring missions and extraordinary
| achievements. I wish they would engage in a space race
| rather than _constant_ illegal, brutal, destructive and
| _absolutely unnecessary_ war.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Un
| i...
| dotnet00 wrote:
| It isn't really the gotcha you think it is when you see
| Falcon 9s flying and landing multiple times a week, the
| most advanced conventional rocket engines ever being mass
| produced, two scifi-esque lunar landers under serious
| development and all the other things.
| prennert wrote:
| And the BRICS summit is going on right now... What a powerful
| display of softpower.
| sph wrote:
| Modi will be soft landing in his chair with a smile at the
| BRICS summit.
| Trias11 wrote:
| Agree.
|
| The quicker russians will get rid of putin infestation the
| sooner this disgrace will end.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| > The quicker russians will get rid of putin infestation
| the sooner this disgrace will end.
|
| Russia is a deeply rotten country, Putin is merely a
| symptom of that.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Thus the joke that Russia's history can be summarized as
| "and then it got worse".
| rdevsrex wrote:
| Lots of people could say the same about Biden or _____
| leader.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Speaking of that, was that another failure of a modified
| Fregat or am I just too dumb to speak on this topic?
| risfriend wrote:
| Congratulations! Huge feat.
| calin2k wrote:
| "India is now on the Moon" PM Modi
| singularity2001 wrote:
| "the sky is not the limit" if I heard correctly
| ignoramous wrote:
| Talk about perks given the absence of the post colonialism visa
| regime at the Moon, yeah?
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