[HN Gopher] Footage of Chang'e-6's land on far side of the moon
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       Footage of Chang'e-6's land on far side of the moon
        
       Author : xnhbx
       Score  : 97 points
       Date   : 2024-06-02 13:54 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cnsa.gov.cn)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cnsa.gov.cn)
        
       | m_a_g wrote:
       | Is the footage fast-forwarded? I'd imagine landing to be much
       | slower.
       | 
       | Also, is that how the moon looks, or is this some kind of night
       | vision?
        
         | fernandopj wrote:
         | Definitely. You can see the lander "breaking" to adjust fall
         | trajectory twice, the actual burst wouldn't be that fast.
        
         | beefnugs wrote:
         | camera footage taken in space is something weird indeed. I
         | remember when i first saw how an eclipse affects shadows in
         | real life. It immediately clicked in my brain why that early
         | moon landing footage looked how it did. And also how easily so
         | many people thought it was fake
        
           | guerrilla wrote:
           | Can you elaborate?
        
             | luyu_wu wrote:
             | Shadows become incredibly sharp for instance, causing
             | everything to look like it's rasterized in software!
        
               | Toutouxc wrote:
               | It looks exactly like on the first Apollo photographs.
               | Guess they must've hired Kubrick's students. Jokes aside,
               | there's just one light source on the moon, and no
               | atmosphere to provide diffuse light. The dynamic range
               | (contrast) of the moon is something we don't see often on
               | Earth.
        
               | qingcharles wrote:
               | And the lighting makes it really hard for the camera to
               | see any stars, so the sky always looks deep black and
               | fake which also adds to all those frustrating conspiracy
               | theories.
        
       | logtrees wrote:
       | Amazing work Chang'e-6 team, amazing work China! Congratulations!
        
       | seatac76 wrote:
       | Good stuff. Very consistent program to moon they have there.
        
       | gcanyon wrote:
       | Nice work, go team human! From
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang'e_6
       | 
       | "If the mission is successful, China will become the first nation
       | to land, collect, and deliver samples back to Earth from the far
       | side of the Moon."
        
         | The_Colonel wrote:
         | Your second sentence (even of it's a citation) makes this about
         | competition, kinda negating the message of your first sentence.
        
           | mef wrote:
           | competition within teams can be a good thing
        
           | SoftTalker wrote:
           | I don't think anyone is really competing for this achievement
           | right now. If I'm running a race with no other competitors,
           | can I claim to have finished first? Or even to be racing?
        
       | tromp wrote:
       | At 0:28 you can see a brief glimpse of part of Chang'e-6 itself.
        
         | pavel_lishin wrote:
         | I can't tell if that's part of the ship, or its shadow:
         | https://i.imgur.com/NTiZuJe.png
        
       | jameshart wrote:
       | Translations matter. There's rather an important semantic
       | distinction between claiming a 'landing' on the moon vs claiming
       | 'land' on the moon.
       | 
       | Currently the headline on HN reads "Footage of Chang'e-6's land
       | on far side of the moon"
        
         | Dalewyn wrote:
         | Looks like a bad translation, it's not even proper English.
         | 
         | NHK reports[1] that China announced Chang'e-6 "landed" (Zhao Lu
         | , chakuriku) successfully on the far side of the Moon.
         | 
         | [1]:
         | https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20240602/k10014468871000.ht...
        
       | tectonic wrote:
       | Super cool! We have been tracking this mission in Orbital Index
       | for a while.
       | https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2024-03-13-Issue-260/#chang...
       | 
       | This mission required a communication satellite that loiters on
       | the far side of the Moon as well to relay communications back to
       | earth.
       | https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2024-03-13-Issue-260/#queqi...
        
         | qingcharles wrote:
         | Love Orbital Index... just realized I stopped getting emails
         | from you guys in 2022 :( Does it auto-unsubscribe if I don't
         | open one for a while? I was away from the Internet for a few
         | months.
        
       | MaximilianEmel wrote:
       | It starts looking like a fractal halfway through.
        
         | mmcconnell1618 wrote:
         | You can't really tell the scale of the craters because each
         | time you get closer, more craters appear. I can imagine that
         | even with stereoscopic eyes, a human could easily misjudge
         | distance and scale too. We're not used to operating in such a
         | barren environment.
        
       | oefrha wrote:
       | The video element didn't work for me on iOS Safari for some
       | reason. Anyway here's the direct link to the video:
       | https://www.sastind.gov.cn/video/0602ce6dl2.mp4
        
         | punk_ihaq wrote:
         | So cool! At 0:28, you can briefly see the shadow of one of the
         | landers legs about to touchdown
        
       | uncertainquark wrote:
       | If anyone's interested, I did a deep dive into the Chang'e 6
       | mission, including clarifying some misconceptions:
       | https://jatan.space/moon-monday-issue-174/
        
       | ammo1662 wrote:
       | The "video" is not actually a video. It is composed by a series
       | of images. So yes the video is fast-forwarded.
       | 
       | And the probe will hover above the landing area and use a laser
       | to detect the surface to choose the landing point. It can be seen
       | in the video.
        
         | mdrewry wrote:
         | true, but aren't all videos just individual frames played in a
         | sequential order?
        
           | ammo1662 wrote:
           | Yes, you are correct. Sorry for misleading about that.
           | 
           | I saw some comments that due to the limited bandwidth of the
           | relay satellite, these images were taken every second. So it
           | is actually not a "video".
        
             | derjames wrote:
             | technically, it is a "video" at 1fps
        
       | Simon_ORourke wrote:
       | Great work, I'm curious as to how autonomous the landing was (I
       | assume fully autonomous) - but since there's awesome video sent
       | back from the dark side of the moon there must be some relay in
       | orbit too.
       | 
       | I'd give the Chinese space program more than a healthy 50/50
       | chance of landing humans on the moon again within the next ten
       | years.
        
         | ein0p wrote:
         | I consider this unlikely - it is at least an order of magnitude
         | harder to land people there and get them back even if you
         | already have the heavy rockets and experience required. The US
         | remains the only country capable of repeating this feat within
         | the next 10 years, in spite of the current timelines being
         | ridiculously unrealistic, simply because it doesn't have to
         | guess quite as much and either already has or in the advanced
         | stages of building the necessary technological base.
        
           | binary132 wrote:
           | I'm not convinced even the US is actually capable of that.
        
             | ein0p wrote:
             | It's the only country that landed people on the moon like
             | twice a year. Sure, that was 50 years ago, but some of
             | those old timers are still around.
        
             | JumpCrisscross wrote:
             | > _not convinced even the US is actually capable of that_
             | 
             | Then you haven't been paying attention to American
             | aerospace over the past decade and a half. It is _far_ more
             | capable today than it was in the 60s, particularly in
             | robotics.
             | 
             | Where we lag is in human space flight, in part due to
             | bureaucracy and complacence among the majors, in part
             | because we have ridiculously-high safety standards.
        
           | elzbardico wrote:
           | I don't believe current day USA will be able to go back to
           | the moon. The decadence and corruption are accelerating.
        
             | ein0p wrote:
             | Corruption merely makes things much more expensive. That is
             | not really a concern to a country that can issue $3T in
             | debt every year. Nor is "decadence": within a decade SpaceX
             | could do it on its own, without NASA.
        
               | spookie wrote:
               | While I agree with the second point, let's be honest:
               | SpaceX has had a lot of help from NASA.
        
       | MaxPock wrote:
       | And then you remember the Wolf Amendment that was enacted to hold
       | back Chinese space efforts and you laugh . According to this
       | American law ,NASA is not supposed to be in contact with the
       | Chinese government or Chinese government affiliated
       | organizations.
        
         | overstay8930 wrote:
         | It was just to delay missile development as Chinese affaires
         | were caught gathering information for non-scientific endeavors,
         | anyone with half of a brain knows that China was going to do
         | this eventually.
        
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       (page generated 2024-06-02 23:02 UTC)