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China's lander releases data, high-resolution images of the Moon:
A little more than one year ago, China's Chang'e 4 spacecraft landed on the far side of the Moon. In doing so, it became the first-ever vehicle to make a soft landing on the side of the Moon facing away from Earth.
To mark the one-year anniversary, China released a batch of scientific data and images captured by five scientific payloads aboard the 1.2-ton spacecraft and its small Yutu 2 rover. Since the landing, the rover has driven a little more than 350 meters across the Moon's surface, studying rock formations and taking additional photos. The data was collected over a period of 12 lunar "days," or most of the last year.
The lander itself carried an excellent camera to image its surroundings. Extra sharp with a good color balance, the Terrain Camera was mounted at the top of the lander, with the ability to rotate 360 degrees. Before it died at the end of the first lunar day, this TCAM returned detailed images of the Moon. A helpful Twitter user in France, Techniques Spatiales, converted the camera's imagery into .png files, which can be found here.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday January 09 2020, @02:39AM (14 children)
I am glad we (as a species) are getting out into space more, and it's great that the Chinese have done this and sent the pictures back too, but frankly if you've seen one image of the Moon's surface, you're pretty much seen them all.
If some of those pictures had a waving Taikonaut in the foreground I would be more excited of course.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday January 09 2020, @03:02AM (3 children)
That was covered in the second episode of Futurama.
There's still plenty of science and geology to be done there, and so there should be a Moon base in the future. On the surface, not orbiting.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 09 2020, @04:11AM (2 children)
Not any more. The dynamo died. Don't you read SoylentNews?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 09 2020, @04:54AM
Nothing some well placed american nukes can't do.
They've done it once, [wikipedia.org] they can do it again.
...
Oh, yes, sorry.
MAGAAAA!!1!1!!oneone1
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday January 09 2020, @05:03AM
There's still plenty of rocks on the Moon. Unless they got glassed.
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(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 09 2020, @04:50AM (8 children)
The first to see water in such pictures - even if you or many others won't be able to distinguish the water - will be a lot happier than you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 09 2020, @05:26AM (7 children)
Please tell me you're not taking that shit show seriously. The science and, well everything, in that show is so broken. Water was definitively discovered around 2009. Further evidence collected within the past few years has show ample reserves both at the poles and likely well even greater subsurface reserves. You will never find water on an area of the moon that's ever exposed to the sun. The moon is a hell hole with 2 week long days with surface temperatures reaching 260 degrees Fahrenheit.
However, due to the moons negligible axial tilt, there are a number of places on the moon that never see the
lightdeath ray of day and here you might see "water". But of course it wouldn't be water. It'd be ultra-solid ice (temps in the poles get down to around -400) masked by dust and never-ending darkness such that it'd appear on the surface pretty much like anywhere else, even with some illumination.(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday January 09 2020, @05:41AM (6 children)
My point: the first to see it (as opposed to just detect it) will have the best chances to be in the position to use it.
With the note that it may still happen in a "nation vs nation space race"conditions (as oppose to "entire humanity's walks into space"), from there, the race for the "most (cap)able Moon colony" is almost predictable.
Yieks - that idiotic temperature scale again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 09 2020, @06:46AM (5 children)
On the temperature thing, most people on this site live in places where farhenheit is the norm. Even if people might think they understand celsius, they probably don't. Yeah 0 is freezing, 100 is boiling. So what's 38? I suspect many would think that is far colder than it is, which is of course > 100F. So when using sites where Americans make up a disproportionate chunk of the population, I stick to fahrenheit. The temperature ranges are thus more relatable, even if they also face the problem of big numbers where they start to become similarly alien.
And we did "see" water dating back to 2009. We used the ultra scientific method of slamming a probe (Chandra mission) into the ground and looking at what came up. It included water. It's also been spectrally identified. So it's not like some mystery that needs to be solved. It's everywhere if you're willing to process the regolith and available in great quantities on the poles if you're not. The nice thing is that any base will probably be wanting to process the regolith anyhow to obtain elements for construction. I expect China's main interest right now are strategic positioning (including considering where they and others will locate things such as their fueling/military/etc facilities) and subsurface stuff. The subsurface of the moon is still pretty unexplored territory and it's going to play a critical role in long-term habitations.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 09 2020, @09:08AM (4 children)
Oh, but they definitely do, no matter what you suspect or don't.
Body temperature at the start of a fever caused by a viral infection - that when you know you definitely got that damn'd flu.
A temperature I call warmish during Melbourne summer, just below 41C when it start to become "fucking warm". 45C is what I call "hot weather" and the temperature the commuter trains I use start to be replaced with coaches. 48C is when I swear the power company for rolling blackouts.
Mystery? Where did you get that?
What I'm saying is: until you don't have a picture of a fucking ice chunk on the Moon, you should be prepared to have high energetic costs to get your water - either harvest or transport. The picture (of macroscopic quantities) of water is what will make the one that took the photo happy.
1kg to LEO is currently between $5000 and $6000 and LEO is 1/200 the way to the Moon; wild guess: 1kg from Earth to the Moon will cost about the same as 1kg of gold on the current market.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 09 2020, @03:32PM (3 children)
One of the things we got most wrong about Mars is how moist the soil is. When you look at it from Earth, even when you look at it from the rover pics Mars looks like a barren desert. Turns out the regolith there is about 5% water by volume. This is one of the few things 'The Martian' accidentally got wrong. Water's damn easy to get - just get some dirt and heat it up! Same thing on the moon. And processing would be required in either case since even in the case of water ice you'll probably have heavy metal and other contaminants. So while we're filtering through the dirt for useful elements and other goodies, we'll be producing tons of water as a side product. So there's no real discovery to be made. Want water for sustenance? Got it everywhere. Want water for a refueling station? Go to the poles.
On the temperature stuff, ask 100 Aussies (I thought you lot used celsius - shameful), let alone Americans the same question. I'd be surprised if more than 5% could give a decent answer. Speaking as an American who talked to a whole lot of Americans back home and quickly realized celsius is about as well understand as русский язык.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 09 2020, @09:57PM (2 children)
Ice specific heat: 2.108 kJ/kgK
Water specific heat: 4.187 kJ/kgK
Water latent heat of vaporisation/condensation: 2,260 kJ/kg = 2.260MJ/kg
Estimate the energy required to separate 1kg of water from a regolith at ... ummm ... as you say -400 whatevs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 10 2020, @05:42AM (1 child)
Energy takes on rather a different meaning on the moon when you're hitting 260 degree 2 week long days with literally 0 atmosphere and have effectively unlimited unowned land to work with. Lots of cool things you simply cannot do on Earth. If we could agree to work together instead of immediately racing to kill each other, we could even achieve kumbaya things like a complete equatorial high voltage DC line. It's "only" about 6800 miles :) around. For contrast the total length of the Great Wall of China is more than 13,000 miles. Ahhh, when people were capable of building for generations instead of next quarter's fiscals.
But in either case it'd be proportional to the energy already being expended to filter the regolith for usable elements which will be 100% required for any construction projects on a meaningful scale.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday January 10 2020, @08:53AM
The first buildings on the moon won't necessarily require filtrating the regolith after materials, just using the it as a filler in some polymer (epoxy resins look like a good candidate, they cross-link. Likely the regolith will contain enough radicals to even kickstart the polymerization) - a ton of the stuff can go for quite a good amount of walls.
Still the cost of excavation - with power sources in the kW range for this is gonna take ages even in low grab.
(switch to Kelvin, will yea mate? We are discussing physics here)
In regards with the energy to extract the water, you are sorta** right. The solar constant is pretty much the same as in near Earth orbit, at about 1.2kW/Sam and one doesn't need electricity to do it, just heat. And an enclosure. Still the cost of excavation and transportation of that regolith.
Besides, it's not very likely to find water on the moon, except for the poles and deep craters. Which means the transportation cost (from shadow to where I can heat up the regolith enough to let go of it's water).
Yeah, I have to admit, may not be that difficult as I initially thought. It will still require, feeling of guts, some 10-20 tons to be safely landed on the moon to kickstart a habitat.
** Hard to speak of 'the temperature on the moon', without an atmosphere. Yes, the regolith will heat up until the in/out radiative processes balances out, but the regolith is quite reflective; 'painting the receiver black' will increase the captured flux.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday January 09 2020, @03:49PM
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