The lander module from India's moon mission was located on the lunar surface on Sunday, one day after it lost contact with the space station, and efforts are underway to try to establish contact with it, the head of the nation's space agency said.
The Press Trust of India news agency cited Indian Space and Research Organization chairman K. Sivan as saying cameras from the moon mission's orbiter had located the lander. "It must have been a hard landing," PTI quoted Sivan as saying.
[...] The space agency said it lost touch with the Vikram lunar lander on Saturday as it made its final approach to the moon's south pole to deploy a rover to search for signs of water.
A successful landing would have made India just the fourth country to land a vessel on the lunar surface, and only the third to operate a robotic rover there.
The space agency said Saturday that the lander's descent was normal until 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the lunar surface.
Previously: Chandrayaan-2: India's Vikram Lander Presumed to Have Crashed
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 09 2019, @01:44PM (17 children)
Or the gravity calculations are off. Only three countries figured out a hack to account for it. They are keeping it as a trade secret.
http://www.enterprisemission.com/Von_Braun.htm [enterprisemission.com]
http://www.enterprisemission.com/Von_Braun2.htm [enterprisemission.com]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday September 09 2019, @04:04PM (16 children)
I'm disinclined to believe anybody who writes in such a breathless, stream-of-consciousness manner while trying to talk about scientific theories. Could do without the ellipsis and dash infatuations, too.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 09 2019, @04:40PM
Yea I wouldn't put too much stock into Richard Hoagland per se. The miscalculated orbits early in both the US and USSR space programs along with the Allias and dePalma effects seem to be actual anomalous observations though.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 09 2019, @05:22PM (14 children)
Here's a little info about Richard Hoagland [wikipedia.org], super genius [youtube.com]:
I'd note that he's not quite as batshit crazy as Gene Ray [wikipedia.org], but that's not exactly a high bar.
Just sayin'.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 09 2019, @05:46PM (12 children)
What is your point? An ad hominum attack is only useful if you are too dumb, lazy, or ignorant to understand the topic. It really doesnt take much effort to skim those pages and get his point that rotating stuff seems to move different than predicted. Then you can follow up on his sources if you are still interested.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 09 2019, @06:15PM (5 children)
My point is that Richard Hoagland is a documented thief, liar and crackpot.
As such, anything he has to say should be taken with a dump truck full of salt.
And by the way, when you say stuff that's actually *true* and bears upon the discussion (in this case, Hoagland's "scientific" ramblings), it isn't Ad Hominem.
Have a wonderful day!
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 09 2019, @06:22PM (4 children)
Exactly, you are too lazy, dumb, or ignorant to judge the content for yourself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 09 2019, @08:44PM (3 children)
Right. That's why we teach elementary school students to formulate mathematics from first principles.
And why we require everyone to prove GTR and QM from first principles before allowing them to interact with gravity or quantum effects.
What's more, we require everyone who wishes to use magnets or anything with an electric motor to prove Maxwell's equations from first principles as well, right?
GTR describes the effect (due to the distortion of space-time) we call "gravity" so precisely that anyone (e.g. Hoagland or you) who claims it's wrong is obviously dumb, ignorant, intentionally dishonest and/or a nutter. Which one are you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 09 2019, @10:23PM (2 children)
Did you miss the supposed 95% of the universe made solely of invisible stuff required for GTR to get the right answer? Stuff that after spending tens to hundreds of billions of dollars looking is still only detectable as deviations from what GTR predicts?
Einsteins model works fine for the solar system but fell apart as soon as people started observing other galaxies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @08:00AM (1 child)
Then what alternative do you propose and how does it explain the cosmic background radiation's anisotropy?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday September 10 2019, @03:47PM
Apparently MOND [wikipedia.org] has done a fairly good job explaining some things.
Obviously it still has some problems, but then again so does dark matter.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday September 09 2019, @06:40PM (3 children)
Are you kidding me? This one is like 20 pages of text, and there's a second page after this.
Not to mention the writing style is enough to give you a massive headache trying to read it.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 09 2019, @06:53PM (2 children)
I do agree that Hoagland is a crackpot. All you have to do is watch one of his presentations where he plays with lunar photos in photoshop until image artifacts show up to see that.
However, I disagree that you can dismiss all the claims of anomalous (relative to Newtonian/Eisensteinian physics) gravitational forces that people have reported.
http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/van90/ExplorerSatellites_LudwigOct2004.pdf [uiowa.edu]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allais_effect [wikipedia.org]
https://brucedepalma.com/ [brucedepalma.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_rotation_curve [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday September 09 2019, @07:39PM (1 child)
Oh, I'm sure there are still plenty of things our science still has wrong/doesn't know about astronomy. I just question this guy's assertion that NASA does know, and is purposely covering up science because...some sort of conspiracy theory that Russia is in on as well. And is somehow still a secret with not one but two separate national governments involved.
And a lot of astronomy, it's not actually that hard for a random scientist with access to the right sort of telescope to make readings of whatever-it-is himself.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 09 2019, @07:51PM
There are plenty of reports of anomolous readings. They all get dismissed as "dark matter".
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday September 09 2019, @10:59PM (1 child)
The failure to believe any of the nonsense you linked to is entirely rational.
Also, posting A/C makes you even less credible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @02:24AM
Well I guess you just wait for your betters to tell you what to think then, and therefore always be behind the curve.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday September 09 2019, @06:43PM
Oh, so he's like the Eliezer Yudkowski of astronomy? Autodidacts are so much fun.
It's not like rocket science is one of the most complicated professions in the world; I'm sure I can just wing this with no real training
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"