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from the much-harder-than-finding-a-needle-in-a-haystack dept.
NASA (USA's National Aeronautics and Space Administration) reports that India's Vikram Lander has been Found:
The Chandrayaan 2 Vikram lander was targeted for a highland smooth plain about 600 kilometers from the south pole; unfortunately the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) lost contact with their lander shortly before the scheduled touchdown (Sept. 7 in India, Sept. 6 in the United States). Despite the loss, getting that close to the surface was an amazing achievement. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera team released the first mosaic (acquired Sept. 17) of the site on Sept. 26 and many people have downloaded the mosaic to search for signs of Vikram. Shanmuga Subramanian contacted the LRO project with a positive identification of debris. After receiving this tip, the LROC team confirmed the identification by comparing before and after images. When the images for the first mosaic were acquired the impact point was poorly illuminated and thus not easily identifiable. Two subsequent image sequences were acquired on Oct. 14 and 15, and Nov. 11. The LROC team scoured the surrounding area in these new mosaics and found the impact site (70.8810°S, 22.7840°E, 834 m elevation) and associated debris field. The November mosaic had the best pixel scale (0.7 meter) and lighting conditions (72° incidence angle).
The debris first located by Shanmuga is about 750 meters northwest of the main crash site and was a single bright pixel identification in that first mosaic (1.3 meter pixels, 84° incidence angle). The November mosaic shows best the impact crater, ray and extensive debris field. The three largest pieces of debris are each about 2x2 pixels and cast a one pixel shadow.
See the NASA article for before/after pictures of the impact site.
Previously:
NASA Lunar Probe Will Help Search for India's Lost Moon Lander
Time is Running Out for India to Establish Contact With its Lunar Lander
India Locates Lander Lost on Final Approach to Moon
Chandrayaan-2: India's Vikram Lander Presumed to Have Crashed
Chandrayaan-2 Updates: Lunar Orbit Insertion and Lunar Orbit Maneuver
Chandrayaan-2 Launch: How to Watch First Mission to the Moon's South Pole Mon 20190722 @ 0913 UTC
Scrubbed Chandrayaan 2 Mission to Moon's South Pole to Launch on Mon July 22 0913 UTC
India's Lunar Spacecraft Launches Sunday on First-Ever Mission to Moon's South Pole
India to Launch Combined Orbiter/Lander/Rover Mission
India's Chandrayaan-2 Moon Mission Planned for 2018
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Bot on Tuesday December 03 2019, @03:57PM (6 children)
getting that close to the surface was an amazing achievement.
whereas in 69 they landed and returned back home using way less than the computing power of a gameboy, hm?
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(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @04:06PM (2 children)
It's too bad the decent parachute failed to deploy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @05:29PM
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Tuesday December 03 2019, @08:56PM
Too bad they didn't have a descent parachute.
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Tuesday December 03 2019, @05:58PM
Considering the Gameboy had more processing power and memory than the Cray 1 supercomputer in 1976, it makes the 1969 landing even more impressive.
A modern cellphone could of run all of NASA, the spaceship, lander and play Angry Birds.....🚀
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 04 2019, @12:49AM (1 child)
> whereas in 69 they landed and returned back home using way less than the computing power of a gameboy
Correction: Neil Armstrong saw the LEM was headed for a boulder field, took manual control and then "they landed" on the moon. Armstrong had extensive practice flying the LEM flying simulator built by Bell Aircraft:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Landing_Research_Vehicle [wikipedia.org]
Neil Armstrong had considerably more computing power (and intelligence) than a gameboy!
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday December 05 2019, @05:56AM
yeah but manual corrections could be issued from earth with a 5 sec. lag which is not bad.
so the 69 mission had crude sensors, basic modeling and smaller lag, while this had better materials sensors models and a 5s lag with operations at 1/6th the gravity. Fucked it up, they could anyway, but this was a trainwreck.
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