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posted by janrinok on Thursday January 09 2020, @01:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the say-cheese dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 09 2020, @06:46AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 09 2020, @06:46AM (#941354)

    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)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 09 2020, @09:08AM (#941363) Journal

    Even if people might think they understand celsius, they probably don't.

    Oh, but they definitely do, no matter what you suspect or don't.

    So what's 38?

    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.

    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.

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 09 2020, @03:32PM (#941445)

      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)

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 09 2020, @09:57PM (#941624) Journal

        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)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 10 2020, @05:42AM (#941778)

          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

            by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 10 2020, @08:53AM (#941814) Journal

            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.

            Energy takes on rather a different meaning on the moon when you're hitting 260 degree

            (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