Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (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
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2