Slashdot Mirror
Japan Scrapping Moon Mission
jonerik writes to mention the AP is reporting that Japan may be scrapping their upcoming moon mission. The original plan was for the "Lunar-A" probe to implant two seismic sensors on the moon, however, the project took so long that the delivery probe has fallen victim to neglect and would take too much money to repair. From the article: "The mission would have been Japan's first to the surface of the moon, and was originally scheduled for lift off in 1995. [...] JAXA's space development committee recommended canceling the Lunar-A project on Monday, and a final decision will be made later in the month, [Satoko] Kanazawa said."
Son't they know it's easier to just fake a moon mission?
> Currently, only the United States, Russia and the European Union have landed probes on the moon.
Nor did ESA. SMART-1 crashed into the Moon, that's not called landing.
if you are laying this rocket up to be unused for more than six months:
1) Park in a well aired garage
2) Jack up the body and put chocks under the suspension points
3) Fill all cylinders with a good quality mineral oil
4) Unplug and remove the battery
5) Be prepared to replace perished rubber components such as tyres or suspension bushes if unused for more that one year
What bit do you think the Japanese left out?
Next time they won't keep the probe in the U-Pack-It long term storage garages in Kobe.
Or at least put a tarp over it or something.
Although there are probably a number of factors at play here, primarily JAXA is simply just chronically underfunded. Similar to the system used for many software developers, they were given a certain amount of funding based on achieving certain checkpoints. However, for the most part they were weighted heavily toward the end of the missions. This is only speculation, but it's likely JAXA was forced to skimp on some things in order to reach their budget checkpoints. Furthermore, if one project became bogged down and was unable to recoup its expenses, it would place further financial strain on the organization as a whole.
The Slashdot Limerick
Japan will now scrap the mission but finish development of the penetrator probes and offer the technology to other space programs, including Russia's, Kanazawa said.
Only in Japan...
NASA did not "just lose" the footage, indeed there was no "footage" (as in film) to lose. Rather the original downlink recordings were misplaced decades ago. It was only recently discovered that those recordings were of significantly higher quality then what was retransmitted and seen by the rest of the world. Therefore there is now a search on for those original source recordings. This search has been fairly high profile including significant stories in Wired Magazine, AP newswire stories, etc.
If you're going to imply conspiracies at least have the well known facts right.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.