[HN Gopher] Private Japanese lunar lander enters orbit around mo...
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Private Japanese lunar lander enters orbit around moon ahead of a
June touchdown
Author : pseudolus
Score : 192 points
Date : 2025-05-07 09:31 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| ionwake wrote:
| funny how the moon is almost exactly 400x smaller and 400x closer
| then the sun, perfectly sized for solar eclipess - makes you
| wonder how lucky we are to study coronal ejections and anomalies
| like that.
|
| like im sure that not common right? maybe it is i dunno
| frotaur wrote:
| Nope, a coincidence. We are extremely lucky
| ionwake wrote:
| Luck is a funny thing isnt it. My favorite quote is "When
| skill meets ignorance, we call it luck."
| dmurray wrote:
| Couldn't you study coronal ejections just as well if the moon
| were bigger? You wouldn't see them on all sides of the moon at
| once, but in return you'd have more total solar eclipses.
|
| From an aesthetic point of view, we're uniquely lucky to have
| the moon just the right size for beautiful eclipse phenomena
| like the diamond ring, but for science I don't think it makes a
| big difference.
| ionwake wrote:
| Apparently if being the perfect size allows for this:
| Gravitational lensing verification during a solar eclipse
| relies on the Sun being just barely covered to observe the
| bending of starlight near its edge.
|
| If the Moon were significantly larger than the Sun:
|
| The Moon would block not just the Sun but also the
| surrounding starlight, making it impossible to observe the
| light bending around the Sun's edge.
|
| As a result, Einstein's prediction of light bending around
| the Sun, famously confirmed during the 1919 eclipse, would
| not have been observable.
|
| I used chatgpt i ahve no idea wat it means
|
| EDIT> previous comment i made was unhelpful because i forgot
| how to read
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| This is nonsense. You don't need to observe the entire edge
| of the sun's disk to observe gravitational lensing. A
| partial view would work just as well.
|
| > I used chatgpt i ahve no idea wat it means
|
| Please don't do that. You're just filling the comment
| section with misleading noise.
| ck2 wrote:
| The thing about sentient life is we are always finding it odd
| that everything seems just right for our evolution when that's
| why it happened in the first place.
|
| Temperatures, resources, distances, orbits, etc.
|
| If there's a world out there without a moon and could not
| really see other plants and stars, would they have developed
| the math and science that we have without such motivation?
| Maybe but slower?
|
| But without our extra large moon, at the right mass and
| distance, helping tides and lighting the night for hunting,
| would life even exist? Maybe but not as advanced or a lot
| slower evolution?
|
| (it's kinda like that Star Trek Voyager episode where they
| inspire a planet to industrialize after being trapped in their
| orbit in a dramatic time dilation)
| card_zero wrote:
| S6E12, "Blink of an Eye": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink
| _of_an_Eye_(Star_Trek:_Vo...
| an0malous wrote:
| Yes but that's an argument for why life bearing planets might
| have larger moons relative to the planet's size, how would
| the moon's apparent size relative to the sun influence
| evolution?
| ck2 wrote:
| It's somewhat of a demonstration/argument of the anthropic
| principle
|
| Because we're here and that appears to be a "special case"
| and rare and no other life spotted (yet) elsewhere, it
| might very well be the reason we are here at all (that we
| haven't figured out yet)
|
| It certainly enabled math and science to progress because
| it was accidentally possible to calculate distances because
| of that size/distance particularity even before telescopes
| and computers, though I realize that's not biological
| evolution
| ionwake wrote:
| fascinating, you made me dig further. Apparently the
| existence of the moon allowed:
|
| Ancient Past, Navigation, Tidal patterns enabled early
| coastal navigation and fishing patterns, critical for
| survival; Prehistory, Evolution of Life, Stabilization of
| Earth's axial tilt led to climate stability, promoting
| diverse ecosystems; Early Civilization, Timekeeping,
| Regular lunar cycles allowed ancient societies to develop
| lunar calendars and plan agriculture; Ancient Astronomy,
| Observing Celestial Events, Solar eclipses (due to
| perfect alignment) inspired early understanding of the
| cosmos; Future, Gravitational Lensing Studies, Its size
| and distance offer a natural model to study lensing
| phenomena and gravitational effects; Far Future, Space
| Colonization, Potential base for observing the universe
| free from Earth's atmospheric interference.
| mmooss wrote:
| > If there's a world out there without a moon and could not
| really see other plants and stars, would they have developed
| the math and science that we have without such motivation?
| Maybe but slower?
|
| They would have other advantages and disadvantages, and
| develop math for different reasons. Then they'd look at our
| planet and say, 'lacking our conditions, how could they
| develop mathematics?'
| an0malous wrote:
| It's one of many lunar anomalies, read "Who Built the Moon?" by
| Alan Butler if you're curious.
| eddyg wrote:
| For ref: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Who_Built_the_Moon%3F
| ionwake wrote:
| thx man right up my alley for a read between coding
| sprints, r u on twitter? we seem to share lunar fascination
| rssoconnor wrote:
| It's also a temporary anomaly as the moon has been moving and
| continues to move further away from the earth. See Lunar
| Recession.
| an0malous wrote:
| Temporary on the scale of 600 million years or more
|
| https://archive.is/2024.04.12-145123/https://www.nytimes.com.
| ..
| jfengel wrote:
| It's extremely rare. It occurs nowhere else in the solar
| system, and isn't even true for the vast majority of Earth's
| history and future. We could survey a million exoplanets and
| likely not find even one single other example.
|
| Neat, though.
| sdeframond wrote:
| There are so many rare things that it is not rare to witness
| a rare thing.
|
| Like someone's exactly 2.000 meters tall. How rare is that ?
| Well, just as rare as someone being exactly 1.999 meters
| talls eh.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > almost exactly 400x smaller and 400x closer then the sun,
| perfectly sized for solar eclipess
|
| for now.
|
| this is purely coincidence that you are observing at this point
| in time, its getting further away
| m000 wrote:
| Wow! Funny how you can have something like this flying almost
| under the news radar, just because the company doesn't have an
| egomaniac/megalomaniac CEO.
| jfengel wrote:
| The megalomaniac actually did the launch. Other lunar
| satellites have attracted a bit more attention than this,
| though, so I'm not sure why this is the first I've heard of it.
| subw00f wrote:
| No, he did not. Multiple teams of very capable people did the
| launch.
| niij wrote:
| This is actually above the radar.
| WrongAssumption wrote:
| SpaceX did the launch.
| macmac wrote:
| No they did not, Firefly did.
|
| UPDATE, my bad did not read properly.
| cybernoodles wrote:
| Their CEO is being sued for discrimination by their ex-NASA
| employees that helped them get off the ground:
|
| https://www.supercluster.com/editorial/japanese-moon-startup...
|
| A lot of Japanese space companies have come under scrutiny for
| discrimination against non-Japanese, sexual harassment, and
| gender discrimination, often by the ex-NASA employees they
| hired.
| hbarka wrote:
| Under the news radar is that China has a space station with a
| recent set of astronauts replacing the old crew, or that
| Chang'e landed on the moon last year.
| intunderflow wrote:
| I do worry the incentives for this will always be at the whim of
| state support for exploration, unfortunately there's no natural
| incentive to really kick private spaceflight off in a major way
| ikt wrote:
| > Tokyo-based ispace
|
| I cannot believe the old Apple naming scheme is still hanging
| around, I get that I'm irrationally hating this style of name but
| I just don't understand, why do I see it as peak lack of
| creativity?
|
| It's like whenever you can't think of a name for something just
| go with e-thing or i-thing
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Up there is also "Spacr" or "Spacely". Then next is naming your
| company after some famous scientist or engineer. Then adding X
| to it. Then naming it a division of an existing company. Then
| naming it after a living person. Then naming it something new.
|
| I think the most creative name would likely just be a UUID.
| harpiaharpyja wrote:
| A UUID wouldn't be creative, well, except for the very first
| time.
|
| Sure, they are all unique. But also very high entropy.
| tzs wrote:
| Seriously, I wish each company would use a UUID as an
| alternate name. Same for each programming language, software
| project, and so on. The UUID should be on all their web
| pages.
|
| People who write articles or blogs about them should use the
| normal name but somewhere should have a table giving the
| UUIDs of the things they mention.
|
| Then when people are trying to find pages about things with
| names that are terrible for searching like X or Go they could
| use the UUID.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| This is approximately a description of the GNS pet name
| system. Also DOIs for scientific articles.
| notahacker wrote:
| Astro/astral/astra seems to be the most overused prefix in
| the space industry, to the point you really struggle to
| distinguish between entities
|
| Cf the propulsion startup ThrustMe
| tmtvl wrote:
| Don't forget Spacey McSpaceface.
| varjag wrote:
| It's not really better with the startup scene everyone here
| knows and loves. The hard -r apps that just won't go away (from
| Flickr to Grindr), endless Libyan domains that slowly gave way
| to -ify and other fads.
| jfengel wrote:
| It seems to be a matter of timing. The "r" fad happened when
| some important niches were being opened. The ly and ify fads
| just don't seem to have coincided with anything anyone needed
| or wanted.
|
| I'm sure there's some new fad waiting around the corner in
| both TLDs and application domains. We'll have to see if any
| of the apps turn out to be useful and sticks around. The TLD
| fad will surely explode and then disappear.
| wil421 wrote:
| Didn't IBM and others use it before Apple? IBM iSeries came out
| before the iMac. I think a few companies were using small e and
| i at the time for the "cool" factor. Intel jumped on the
| bandwagon after the iMac, IIRC.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| Cisco had an ios and iphone before apple. though Im not sure
| the cisco iphone was actually ever released
| wafflemaker wrote:
| But AFAIK, Cisco IOS is all caps, not the cool lowercase i
| and big second letter.
| akovaski wrote:
| IBM rebranded AS/400 to iSeries in 2000, which is after the
| iMac came out.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_eServer
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac
| duxup wrote:
| I kinda like it in a.. almost retro style.
| dmix wrote:
| The company started in 2010
| mmooss wrote:
| Maybe it means something different in Japan, where the primary
| language and cultural impact of Apple is different.
| eabeezxjc wrote:
| I would like the lunar satellite to have the ability to broadcast
| messages to earth. Such an emergency communication, even one way
| like othernet.is
| jfengel wrote:
| Lunar orbiters spend half their time on the far side of the
| moon, where they can't access earth. You'd need a constellation
| to provide any kind of emergency system.
|
| There must exist a lunasynchronous orbit that would remain over
| the earth side of the moon, though I'm not sure if its close
| enough to the moon to avoid being perturbed by the earth and
| kicked out.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| >There must exist a lunasynchronous orbit that would remain
| over the earth side of the moon, though I'm not sure if its
| close enough to the moon to avoid being perturbed by the
| earth and kicked out.
|
| Selenostationary orbits (The astrodynamics terms generally
| take the Greek name) are indeed unstable and vulnerable to
| perturbation. Instead, you can have a trajectory around one
| of the Earth-Moon LaGrange points (points where the
| gravitational pull from each body is equal)
| jiehong wrote:
| Is othernet easy to access? The receiver they sell on that
| website is sold out.
|
| Is there a list of programs available?
| tjpnz wrote:
| Resilience is such a boring name for a lunar lander given all of
| the Japanese mythology about the moon. I hope someday there'll be
| a Kaguya-hime[0].
|
| 0:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_the_Bamboo_Cutte...
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| Like the quip about public transport, particularly busses.
| Decades go by without a lander, then a lot of them turn up at
| once.
| tmtvl wrote:
| It's easy to get buses to arrive on time: just get rid of all
| the cars that get in the way.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It's easy to drive in the city, just get rid of all the buses
| that are constantly stopping in front of you.
| mmooss wrote:
| Then you'd have a lot more cars stopping in front of you.
| Next time you pass a bus, look at all the people inside,
| and then imagine each of them, on the same block, in their
| private cars.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| And even without that effect, okay you remove 2% of
| traffic, the driving experience is pretty much the same
| even without anyone being directly behind a bus.
| cybernoodles wrote:
| Hopefully they fixed their toxic culture that caused their
| previous crash.
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/a891387a-278f-434b-9ff8-791495aaa...
| Stratoscope wrote:
| https://archive.is/UiNWf
| mmooss wrote:
| On one hand, the private competition to match mature, 60 year old
| technology makes sense. NASA should be focused well out past the
| bleeding edge.
|
| But being private companies, do they publish their science and
| research like NASA does? Is development of space tech moving
| forward in proprietary silos?
|
| Maybe part of goverment funding, which many or all of these
| projects have, should be publishing the science (if they don't
| publish it already).
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