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Details of Chinese Spacecraft's Asteroid Encounter
the_newsbeagle writes "Chinese aerospace engineers have revealed, for the first time, details about their Chang'e-2 spacecraft's encounter with the asteroid Toutatis last month. They have plenty to boast: The asteroid flyby wasn't part of the original flight plan, but engineers adapted the mission and navigated the satellite through deep space (PDF). Exactly how close Chang'e-2 came to Toutatis is still unclear. The article states that the first reports 'placed the flyby range at 3.2 km, which was astonishingly—even recklessly—tight. Passing within a few kilometers of an asteroid only 2 to 3 km in diameter at a speed of 10,730 meters per second could be described as either superb shooting or a near disaster.' If the Chinese spacecraft did pass that near, it could provide a "scientific bonanza" with data about the asteroid's mass and composition."
Where the fuck did that come from?
It was a payload destined for the NYTimes, but somehow, it was re-routed.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Have you seen some of the missions NASA has undertaken?
Yes, and even when they fail or kill people, they aren't usually described as "reckless" or "disaster" (even if near). If someone died, it was a tragedy, but not a disaster. At least in mainstream media. But this, a well-executed fly-by, is a reckless near-disaster. It wasn't the mission that was the complaint, but the coverage of it. It was described in a negative manner. Why?
Learn to love Alaska
But was the camera Sorny, Cannonn, or Nycon?
Learn to love Alaska
that was either a Chinese satellite on a close flyby, or the joke.
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
Passing within a few kilometers of an asteroid only 2 to 3 km in diameter at a speed of 10,730 meters per second could be described as either superb shooting or a near disaster.
I'm not often a "Yay, China!" kind of guy, but I do admit that's pretty cool; ballsy even. I'm happy for the engineers who stuck their necks out to try it. Pretty neat!
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
I read it as the American author feeling threatened by the Chinese space programme that is apparently now rivalling or even surpassing NASA. Yes, surpassing. When they get their space station up it will be bigger than the largest US one, putting Skylab in third place behind the Russians.
It's stupid. We should be congratulating them and thanking them for advancing science and mankind's exploration of space. Maybe work with them on the ISS, or getting back to the moon. Don't feel inadequate, just accept that you are not funding NASA enough to be the leaders at everything and that it really doesn't matter.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Do you have to work hard to avoid everything that conflicts with your bizarre word view?
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/28/challenger.anniversary.teacher/index.html - "The Challenger disaster's teachable moment"
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/01/us/columbia-anniversary/index.html - "NASA, Texas towns mark Columbia disaster"
But yes given Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia it takes a lot for something to reach "disaster" level for NASA.
I agree with you and yet I felt deeply uneasy while reading the article. Why? I guess I'm kind of hoping for the best while expecting the worst.
We'll never make it.......oh! we made it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWf3iJjqYCM&list=FL7kKrE4eTs17mQl7eyvJIOg
Why?
Maybe this ieee Spectrum author has a subtle personal bias and he injected a single provocative word, who knows? At least the story wasn't written for a government owned media outlet, passed through government censors working under the guidance of national political bias. Try People's Daily sometimes.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
I've watched state news in China. It's less biased than Fox news, and there are other news sources with dissenting opinions.
Learn to love Alaska
Because they are jealous - that the Chinese could afford to remission a probe to do something "trivial" as photograph an asteroid. Of course when NASA decides to remission probes to deliberately crash into the Moon then that is "discovery". To me, deliberately crashing anything man-made into an extra-terrestrial object runs the risk of contaminating samples for future experiments.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Fox News isn't a government sanctioned or government supported news outlet. You should at the very least compare NPR with CCTV to get anywhere close to a valid comparison. By the way, did you watch Chinese language CCTV or CCTV-9 International? Big difference there if you didn't know.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Then they conducted a reckless ASAT test at relatively high LEO altitudes and nearly doubled the number of trackable debris at that altitude [see Johnson Space Center's Orbital Debris Quarterly Newsletter for the chart]. At that altitude, the pieces of their defunct weather satellite will remain a hazard for many decades. That got them uninvited.
China needs to decide whether the PLA is running the show or not, and decide whether they want to be a responsible space-faring nation... or not.
For once, the phrase "photos or it didn't happen" seems about right, if only to encourage the Chinese to publish their data sooner rather than later. Excellent achievement though!
Taking chances, dancing near the fire, I love them. This is science done right. I am glad they didn't listen to some risk adverse nitwit who would rather have a useless "successful" mission than a risky useful mission. This why we have curiosity tramping around on mars with a computer with 2G of storage on it. It probably was the only computer to be able to pass all the bureaucratic tests as opposed to some simple physics tests. But if it fails not a single stone could be cast at the guy who picked it.
NASA shot Cassini through gaps in the rings of Saturn, twice! However, if you want to see reckless then watch Armstrong navigate onto the moon in a tinfoil box.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
A satellite can change the orbit of an asteroid; one play to deflect them is a 'gravity tractor' that uses ion engines to station keep some distance from the asteroid, and its gravitational pull alters its orbit.
However, that technique (which is what I presume you were thinking of) depends on the probe spending months near the asteroid. This flyby was on a timescale of ~1s. Chang'e 2 has a mass of ~2500kg, so we are talking an effect that is likely to be tiny compared to other influences such as solar light pressure, and gravitational interaction with planets.
And they are complete and helpless victims of "open spying by satellites", with no spy satellites of their own.
When China finally reaches the modern era and actually lets its people have free access to information, such ignorant posts as yours might become less common. Well, no, this is Slashdot.