China's Jade Rabbit Moon rover sends back first photos

[LongTomH]

Source: BBC News

The first robot to land on the Moon in nearly 40 years, China's Jade Rabbit rover, has begun sending back photos, with shots of its lunar lander.

Jade Rabbit rolled down a ramp lowered by the lander and on to the volcanic plain known as Sinus Iridum at 04:35 Beijing time on Saturday (20:35 GMT).

It moved to a spot a few metres away, its historic short journey recorded by the lander.

On Sunday evening the two machines began photographing each other.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25393826

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[msongs]

1. so are they gonna build a walmart? nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. No.

[sakabatou]

20. A Starbucks?

[eggplant]

13. That's pretty offensive.

And it doesn't even make any sense.

[penultimate]

49. Is it anymore offensive than when people make comments about finding/stealing oil on

Mars/moon/asteroid when NASA/JPL does something? Neither makes much sense and neither are really all that offensive to me.

[eggplant]

63. Um, nice strawman there.

It is offensive because you are implying that the motive for the Chinese putting a rover on the moon is less than scientific. It makes no sense because Wal-Mart is an American company.

So, I'm glad/sorry that you don't find it offensive. But it is. Can't you just be impressed with their feat and leave it at that?

[penultimate]

64. I am impressed with it, but just 'cause they aren't the US

it doesn't mean people can't make silly jokes about it. People make silly jokes all the times about the US and other countries, I fail to see why the Chinese should immune to such silliness.

[eggplant]

66. You are welcome to make such jokes.

And people are free to point out at (a) they are offensive, and (b) they aren't even successfully funny.

How about this -- go back and replace Chinese with Polish, and see if that helps it be less offensive or make more sense.

[penultimate]

73. What's being joked about is the space program, not the race or ethnicity of the people behind it

Last edited Tue Dec 17, 2013, 11:13 PM - Edit history (1)

It just happens to be China is the one who did it. I guess I'm not seeing what part of it is offensive. Are all jokes/criticism about China's policies (Although the Walmart thing doesn't make sense, but I got the gist of it) offensive? It's not as if the poster made a comment about the rover being a bad driver or something related to standard stereotypes of Asians. That would be something that could be considered offensive, but all jokes about the country of China are not offensive. Although, I'd love to hear what part of it you find offensive and why it's offensive. Perhaps I'm not seeing something that you're seeing. I'd love to be educated.

[NobodyHere]

72. Walmart is a Person

And People have feelings!

[SoapBox]

16. Build a Walmart?

Hilarious and I absolutely get your sense of humor!

I would be thinking however that they are looking for manufacturing space!

[LanternWaste]

48. Is that usual after a non-manned lunar landing?

Is that usual after a non-manned lunar landing?

[penultimate]

50. Naaah.... maybe a low-g sweat shop to make it more difficult for employees to jump to their deaths

[JI7]

58. walmart is an american company

[postulater]

2. These are the voyages...

Congrats to the brilliant people who worked to make this happen.

May this stimulate renewed efforts in our country.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. +1

[valerief]

5. It sent back a selfie? nt

[bhikkhu]

15. No, the lander took a picture of the rover

Its a great accomplishment, really.

[valerief]

24. I know. It's another place for countries to war over. nt

[Archae]

6. It's a soundstage in Beijing...

What? That's what the moon landing hoax people would say.

[Duer 157099]

7. Not so

This is a robot, even the hoaxers think that a robot can get there.

But what if it fails to find the US flag?

[SoapBox]

17. The flag...

My first thought...Opps, we ran over your flag with our rover!

Snark

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

27. Oh, that's the moon? I thought it was Beijing with all the pollution.

[nolabear]

8. MAN has transmission quality improved! I hope we find a way to work together.

Because the way things are going in both countries we need one another.

[billhicks76]

19. Dark Side

Amazing. I'd love to see pics from the dark side of the moon which we can't see with scopes because the moon is the only celestial body in our solar system besides the sun that doesn't rotate.

[Paulie]

23. The sun rotates

Given the size, it hauls butt!

http://www.suntrek.org/solar-surface-below/dive-beneath-solar-surface/how-fast-sun-rotate.shtml

[immoderate]

26. It rotates. But that period is the same as its revolution.

Mercury does the same thing.

I'm guessing there are several more satellites that behave similarly. I can't say which ones offhand. But it's consistent with the physics.

--imm

[Fumesucker]

41. Mercury is tidally locked to the Sun but not the same way the Moon is to the Earth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_%28planet%29

Mercury does not experience seasons in the same way as most other planets, such as the Earth. It is locked, so it rotates in a way that is unique in the Solar System. As seen relative to the fixed stars, it rotates exactly three times for every two revolutions it makes around its orbit.[13] As seen from the Sun, in a frame of reference that rotates with the orbital motion, it appears to rotate only once every two Mercurian years. An observer on Mercury would therefore see only one day every two years.

[Deep13]

30. The moon rotates too.

once ever 28 days, hence always keeping the same face to the Earth.

[mallard]

62. I believe the moon always faces earth from the same side because...

... it is slightly lopsided and somewhat heavier on the near side, but have not found any confirmation of this concept.

[Deep13]

69. Possibly. Most of the lava plains are on the near side. The moon is tidally locked.

The kinetic energy of the changing tides on earth has to come from somewhere. And it comes from the moon's rotational and orbital energy. So the rotation of the moon has slowed to once per month and it is slowly loosing speed, causing the moon to get a little further away all the time. Also, the earth also experiences the friction of the ocean tides and similar forces in its molten interior, so the Earth's rotation is slowing too. Eventually the Earth and the moon will only show each other the same side all the time.

[Xithras]

78. The Earth may never be tidally locked to the moon.

The math has already been done, and the moon will be tidally locked to the Earth in about five billion years with a 47 day rotational cycle. Problem is, the sun will be expanding into a red giant at that point, and the Earth will be blasted by a far more powerful solar wind and may even be within the outer edges of the solar atmosphere. Some projections show that increased drag will slow the moons orbit and, once it reaches the Roche limit, the moon will break apart into a ring where it will remain until the planet is consumed by the sun.

Not that it will matter for people. Life as we know it only has a few hundred million years left on this planet, will be largely gone in 600 million years, and will be reduced to nothing more than microbes in a billion. We won't be around to see any of it.

[LongTomH]

39. First, it's the far side, not the dark side. The Moon rotates once every 28 days, meaning........

each hemisphere gets 14 days of sunlight and 14 days of darkness.

Secondly, we've seen that far side, in pictures by lunar orbiters and flybys by US, Russian, European Space Agency, Japanese, Indian and Chinese spacecraft.

[SkatmanRoth]

9. First thing it does is send back a Selfie

How juvenile

[AtheistCrusader]

40. Um, it didn't take a picture of itself.

[penultimate]

51. I'm pretty sure that's a joke...

It was one of the first thing that popped into my mind too, even though it's obvious the lander took the photo... It's probably 'cause of the numerous selfie stories that have been in the news lately (Obama at the Mandela funeral and that lady who took one while that guy stood on the bridge ready to jump)

[AtheistCrusader]

67. Ok, I see it now.

Sorry, my joke threshold has been severely damaged of late.

[Mojo Electro]

10. This is awesome!

So glad we are reaching out again!

[Historic NY]

11. If they wanted Moon rocks we could have sold them some..

[eggplant]

12. Most excellent. Congrats to the design team.

And no, they weren't selfies. They took pix of each other. Of course, they might have been updating their facebook page during the landing.

It's projects like this that will get people interested in science again. Rovers are cool!

[n2doc]

14. Good for them

Maybe the idiots in Congress will get worried about the commies up there and begin funding space exploration and science at adequate levels again.

Then again, they will probably believe it is a hoax.

[Scuba]

18. An early step. The Chinese have a reported 1,000,000 people working on their space program ...

... and have some very ambitious plans.

[yurbud]

68. and our government is working on bailing out, protecting from prosecution, and stacking the deck for

Wall Street's past, present, and future three card monte and various Ponzi schemes.

[Garion_55]

21. I figured we would have a base up there by now

Growing up at the end of the space race and watching the shuttle program develop, I thought we as a country would be on the moon when i was this age and maybe starting mars by the time i retired.

IT sickens me to see that we have barely moved the ball at all in the last 30 years. Our first priority as a species should be, after providing basic functions for all its people, to explore the galaxy and try to figure out what the deal is. Instead we get so mired up in trivial bullshit. Power struggles. Religious wars. Economic exploitation. Border disputes.

Its depressing to me that I exist in a time that will probably never allow me the opportunity to explore space even though being teased about it all my life and its the one thing I want to do most. Get off this stupid planet.

[LongTomH]

36. I'm with you, Friend

I've been hoping and fighting to get the US back into space for decades. Starting in the late '70s, I was a member of [link:The L-5 Society|The L-5 Society] until it was merged / engulfed and devoured by the National Space Institute.

I've been a member of the National Space Society, gone to Washington for the March Storm Citizens Lobbying sessions sponsored by the ProSpace Foundation, and a participant in Senior Associate Get-togethers by the Foresight Institute (K. Eric Drexler's institute for discussion of molecular nanotechnology.)

A few months ago, I was an online participant in the Starship Congress put on by Icarus Interstellar. The whole 4 days of the Congress are available on The Icarus Interstellar YouTube channel. It was exciting to let myself hope again!

It's difficult to hold out any hope these days. We've got a Congress that seems divided by people uncaring about science and space exploration, and those, mostly on the right, who are actively hostile.

[NoOneMan]

22. Wow. Imagine when the first man walks on that alien terrain

[icymist]

25. In other news, China has now declared the moon as part of their air-space...

demanding that all other countries receive permission from them to fly by the moon.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
in case it is needed,

[defacto7]

28. Go team China!

At least I would like to think we could be a team. I wish the whole planet could be a team. We'd go a long way.

[penultimate]

54. Isn't that how the ISS works?

[defacto7]

55. Theoretically yes.

It's not what you'd call state of the art anymore, more like a drifting who knows what with leaks. It's also not been known to be the friendliest outpost for mixed camaraderie either. I'm not sure it has been able to keep a bridge open between cultures and politics. That was the hope in it's time though.

[mainer]

76. But we have forbidden China's participation in ISS

thanks to the Republicans in Congress. So the Chinese resorted to their own space program, which is leaping ahead. Funny how our actions come back to bite us.

[Deep13]

29. Just to put this into perspective...

China has just done on the moon what NASA did on Mars in 1996.

[olddad56]

31. what have we done lately?

[sarin]

33. Curiosity for one

NASA has done a number of things of late, but it would be nice if it had more funding for some of its more ambitious projects.

[Deep13]

57. Cassini at Saturn, New Horizons en route to Pluto...

three more Martian rovers, Voyager found the edge of the solar system, discovery of about a gazzillion extra solar planets, the Hubble is still producing cosmic mind-fucks, Messenger at Mercury, pretty sure there are still solar observatories in orbit somewhere and GRB detectors too.

[joshcryer]

59. Haha, the US has DOMINATED at solar system probes since the 90s:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Solar_System_probes

edit: see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_artificial_satellites_and_space_probes

It is just a joke, no other country comes even remotely close.

The reason it's slowed in the past few years is because the fucking Republicans gutted space science probes. Ironically under Bush more were funded because those Republicans were for Bush but once Obama announced his NASA budget, which prioritized space probes, the Republicans revolted and completely shut his NASA budget down.

It didn't help that Obama killed Bush's bullshit Cx program which was a very costly, abysmal approach to going forward with manned space.

Hint: manned space is not the end all.

[olddad56]

32. I wonder how many of the scientists and engineers were educated in the US?

[JeffHead]

34. I wonder how much of OUR technology they stole to make this happen. n/t

[hunter]

47. I share all my technology under Open Source or Creative Commons licenses.

Keeping a "precious" rots the soul.

wikipedia

Obviously I'll never get rich, but I'm good with that. There's not a lot of "stuff" anyone can buy that isn't bad for the environment in some way.

In a better world, government is entirely transparent and any research and technology paid for by the government is free for anyone to use.

[Dustin DeWinde]

35. while the chinese are rapidly catching up to us in technology

we have rightwing imbeciles telling American school children that the earth was made in seven literal days less than ten thousand years ago.

Teabag stupidity is dangerous to our national security and our economic well being

[ramapo]

38. Catching up?

Don't look but they are about to blow right past us.

[Dustin DeWinde]

42. they wont pass us this year or next

c'mon they are celebrating landing a rover on the moon we land rovers on mars routinely.
mars is 63 million miles away the moon is barely 240 000 miles away.

healthy concern is warranted, but to say they are about to 'blow right past us' is just not accurate

[ramapo]

37. We should be ashamed and embarressed

Look back at what China was in 1969 when we landed men on the moon. Realize how far they have come. Also realize how far we have fallen. Remember (if you are old enough) how everybody was tired of going to the moon. After all, what was the point, especially when children were starving here at home. People thought it all a waste of money.

Well 44 years later, give or take, and children are still starving here at home. That hasn't changed. What has changed is the United States, driven by its lazy, backwards-thinking majority, has fallen from a spot of scientific leadership to a country that has to hire a ride for its astronauts.

Disgusting. Congratulations to the Chinese. You can bet they will not put their space program on the back burner.

[Dustin DeWinde]

43. we have a much healthier, much more inclusive society than we did in 1969

but as for it being 'disgusting' that we have to hire rides from Russians to get our astronauts into space, you are quite correct

[penultimate]

52. What about all the recent missions that JPL sent to Mars and Jupiter?

How about the ones they are getting ready to launch? I still don't understand how other countries sending probes and rovers out means the US has failed. If you look at all the active space missions, you'll see that the US has more than any other agency/country.

[joshcryer]

60. The manned space program is not the end all.

The unmanned space program has brought so much science on the solar system and universe that it is insane to criticize it or what NASA has done. We have literally discovered that Mars could inhabit life. We have literally discovered hundreds of Earth-like planets.

The manned program is a shame, but the way Obama approached it took it out of the hands of cost plus military contractors and put it in civilian hands. It's a brilliant strategy Obama took and if he hadn't canceled the Shuttle, which killed two crews and was overly complex, we'd be screwed and our manned spaceflight trajectory would be a joke.

[jtuck004]

44. Mars Curiosity rover finds life-supporting chemicals

5 days ago... here.. But that's still a cool achievement by the Chinese.

And a Dutch company is moving toward sending 4 people to Mars who will never return home. They have 200,000 applications - (slightly worse odds than those who send in resumes to Walmart when they advertise jobs, I think). But I digress.

I don't know much about Kickstarter, but I was thinking it would be a fine idea for a campaign that would sponsor Ted Cruz as the occupant in one of the 4 seats on that spaceship...

[joshcryer]

61. Oh, and everything NASA produces is public domain...

...and published freely. We'll see if China is even 1% as open as the Planetary Data System.

[jtuck004]

71. "everything NASA produces is public domain" < Very likely not, but most of it, probably.

There are secrets all over the place, and it would strain credulity to think they don't have some, eh?

[joshcryer]

74. Fair enough, I should've said "publicly releases."

ITAR would be a good point there where NASA is heavily restricted. Can't give out the plans for a ballistic missile, naturally. The Planetary Data System is the largest collection of solar system and universe data known to humanity, though. It's actually kind of weird that the EU doesn't have an analog and a lot of their data is super hard to get.

[iamthebandfanman]

45. wonder where the studio

is that they shot this at ?

[penultimate]

53. It's on Mars.

[kentauros]

56. It's on Titan.

In the shadow of the Monolith

[Martak Sarno]

46. Moonies?

I understand American Corporations are lining up for negotiating with the Chinese to hire Moonies to work for "loonies" to export moon rocks to the U.S.

Big demand at local mega stores!

Wonder if some Chinese politician read Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress?"

Get ready for a "Rocking" good, catapulting time!

"Throw rocks at 'em, Man!"

[jessie04]

65. Is that snow on the wheels??

[Ash_F]

70. No, it's light.

I think they make it reflective so it doesn't superheat when light shines on it in the vacuum of space.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

75. uh-oh - don't like the looks of this one

Planet Houston is doomed!

[mainer]

77. GOP Congress has kept us from working with China

What stupid, short-sighted thinking.

Despite growing trade ties between both countries, a close scientific partnership with China has been rejected by several American politicians including Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), who in 1999 stated:
"They (China) are the evil empire".[3]
In 2010, Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) urged President Barack Obama not to allow further contact between NASA and the China National Space Administration (CNSA). In a letter addressed to the President, he wrote:
I have grave concerns about the nature and goals of China’s space program and strongly oppose any cooperation between NASA and CNSA’s human space flight programs without Congressional authorization.[4][5]
In April 2011, the 112th United States Congress banned NASA from using its funds to host Chinese visitors at NASA facilities.[2] As stated under Public Law 112-55, SEC. 539:

Geoffrey Marcy, an astronomy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, called the ban "completely shameful and unethical".[1] Sir Martin Rees, the current Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, called the ban a "deplorable 'own goal' by the US".[1]
In 2013, a number of American scientists decided to boycott a NASA meeting, with senior academics either withdrawing individually, or pulling out their entire research groups.[1] This was in response to actions by officials at NASA Ames to prohibit Chinese nationals from attending the Kepler Science Conference II. Rep. Frank Wolf was quick to respond in a letter to NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, saying that the restriction only applied to bilateral meetings and activities between NASA and the Chinese government or Chinese-owned companies. The NASA Ames officials had mischaracterized the law as Kepler Science Conference II is a multilateral event.[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_exclusion_policy_of_NASA