China's Chang'e 5 moon lander is no more after successfully snagging lunar rocks

[liberal N proud]

China's Chang'e 5 lander touched down on the moon and collected the first lunar samples in nearly 50 years, but now the lights have gone out.

However, it appears the spacecraft has already ceased working. Reports indicate that the lander was damaged when it acted as a launch pad for the mission's ascent vehicle to blast off from to reach low lunar orbit on Dec. 3.

https://www.space.com/amp/china-chang-e-5-moon-lander-is-no-more

[mr_lebowski]

1. People I'm glad I'm not today ...

The scientists who did the calculations saying this whole 'acting as a launch pad' thing was going to work

[Sneederbunk]

2. They are lucky they are not Norh Korean.

[mr_lebowski]

3. True, they'd be even worse off then ... but don't think China trucks with failure a whole lot more

than NK ...

Might still get jail time, but you probably won't get the Ramsey Bolton treatment.

Either the kind he dished out, or that he eventually received.

[brush]

4. So the return vehicle is kaput? It never got off the ground...er ah. moon?

[Voltaire2]

5. It was planned for.

The lander’s primary purpose after landing was to be a launch pad for the robotic payload it brought to the moon.

The article’s failure to make that clear until about 10 paragraphs down was a much more significant failure than the fact the the lander was blasted out of commission.

[Layzeebeaver]

7. All is well.

The landers damage was something the mission team expected could happen. They’ve lost a few weeks of science observations - the lander was going to die since it has no heaters for use during the lunar night.

The link is basically click bait. When you read it through it basically says everything is fine.

[Marcuse]

8. Just like all the Apollo landers.