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China's Jade Rabbit Lunar Rover Officially Declared Lost
An anonymous reader writes "'Jade Rabbit,' the first lunar rover successfully deployed by China, has now been officially declared 'lost.' The rover encountered problems on January 25th, just over a month into its planned three-month mission. 'The rover's mechanical problems are likely related to critical components that must be protected during the cold lunar night. When temperatures plunge, the rover's mast is designed to fold down to protect delicate instruments, which can then be kept warm by a radioactive heat source. Yutu also needs to angle a solar panel towards the point where the sun will rise to maintain power levels. A mechanical fault in these systems could leave the rover fatally exposed to the dark and bitter cold.'"
Someone mentioned here how spiffy it would be to send a 1kg-class lander to the Moon, while I disagreed. Now here's another reason why that's a bad idea, one that didn't occur to me at the time: the volume vs. surface ratio, and thermal management in those extreme conditions.
Ezekiel 23:20
This is going to be great!
I'll be able to open the first junkyard on the Moon at this rate =)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Nice and strong signal from Yutu: http://www.moonviews.com/2014/02/yutu-rover-has-phoned-home-from-the-moon.html
Can the deployment be successful if the object deployed failed the majority of its mission objectives?
https://twitter.com/uhf_satcom/status/433702655290908672
China is ascending the learning curve. Space provides a lot of tough problems. I wonder how many more visits NASA will be getting in the future, both official, and "unofficial"?
NASA's Strict Rules for Talking to and Working with China
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
It was made with cheap American parts!
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Their mission had been going so well until the failure. It had been looking like it would be a good promotional piece for the Chinese, now it's just another failed space mission.
Well, not a complete failure. They did get there, and the rover was working for quite some time.
Ah well, could have been worse. Could have just failed utterly like that Mars launch a few years back. I forget who did that one.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
If you've ever seen those roboduel shows you know that motors will stop responding if they're disturbed by violent activity like a butterfly or a gentle breeze. Wheels first, then actuators.
Poor robot. It's cold out there.
-AC.Falos
I'm not dead yet! https://twitter.com/uhf_satcom...
Just shows the difficulty of developing a space probe from scratch. By keeping a steady stream of probes going to Mars, the probe teams at JPL stay in practice, and good probe designs come about. Starting out with a small Mars probe in the late 90s, and steadily growing bigger was a good path.
The US space program had all sorts of problems early on - a bunch of Ranger probes failed. The key was that they kept trying until it worked.
Will China keep trying until they get it right, or will they decide that space is too hard?
This is going to be great!
I'll be able to open the first junkyard on the Moon at this rate =)
The Jade Rabbit is nothing compared to the "junk" left all over the moon by the Apollo Missions. Even the Soviets left more crap on the moon than China.
In this respect it's still USA #1 with China nor any other country not even close to ever catching up.
wouldn't be the first time...
Aliens don't like when they base is polluted with radioactive stuff, Chinese did not got the memo?
+1 Angry, With Valid Point
[UID-HeinzIntel]
BETA is the new CLASSIC, get used to taking it up the...
Just another quality product "Made In China"
http://slashdot.org/submission...
1,000 “outbroken” - 1,000 apologies for my retarded kinsmen. "Please to be restful. It is only a few crazies who have from the crazy place outbroken." --William S. Burroughs.
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
That's going to be an interesting PayPal claim.
If we colonize Mars, it won't be the World Wide Web anymore. UWW?
The Jade Rabbit is the best vibrator I've ever owned. Do yourself a favor and get one (or two!).
They go great on the clit, in the pussy, in the ass, tickling the dick or nipples, and (my personal favorite) pressed up tight against your taint, just under the scrotum.
As I pointed out on the story on Israel doing a moon mission last week, the technology and knowledge required to put an (unmanned) 100kg object on the moon (or Mars, or other celestial rock) is very well understood these days, so much so that well-financed private corporations (see the various X-prise competitors) can do it, given $100m or less. All the engineering issues are both well-known, and well-documented as to solutions. This is all out in the open press, so anyone with the capital merely has to hire enough competent engineers, and have enough money to build the resulting design. Rocket science is no longer rocket science.
What remains extraordinarily difficult is for someone to build a long-functioning probe. The knowledge of the practical problems (and their workaround/solutions) has NOT been disseminated, and thus, pretty much everyone has to learn from scratch. Extraterrestrial probe building is still very much a Deep Magic field, with only a select few organizations (mostly NASA, but ESA too) having the experience to do it well. And they're not sharing.
I fully expect the Chinese to get a working lander robot sometime soon. Just like I fully expect that their next one will not work to its design specs, either. In many ways, it's like building a new car from scratch - the first couple of prototypes crash badly, and you have to learn all the tricks by yourself, because nobody else shares their hard-won info with you. Tesla does well because they were able to hire experienced people from Ford, etc. who brought that knowledge with them. The Chinese Space Agency (CNSA) wasn't able to do that, for obvious reasons, so they're going to have to do the whole learning curve themselves. Good news is that they'll do it MUCH faster than anyone else did, if for no other reason that the tech and general science knowledge is more available and understood.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
Not the OP; why flamebait? Innovation isn't exactly China's strength, it's well-documented that much of their more advanced tech, from nukes to jet fighters, to all kinds of consumer and industrial electronics, to all kinds of manufacturing techniques, to you name it.... have been "sourced" from other countries that actually took the risks to develop it. Posting myself as AC because I'm modding, and I modded the parent up, because the point is assuredly worth discussing, as much as others might shy away from its controversial nature.
... it just started its real mission.
There should be a link in the page footer.
It is better to have roved and lost than to have never roved at all.
God spoke to me
With the US, they would have considered more possibilities of how to handle disasters.
With China, it's mostly about the events that generate PR (and thus face-saving) value. The lunar rover's construction is considered an afterthought except for getting it to the desired event.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I don't know what koolaid you guys have been drinking, but Chinese news says the rabbit has waked up.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
I guess it's some really tenacious stuff, and very abrasive.
On board the LEM the astronauts took out rocks to look at them, the dust was so fine it got under their finger nails and took several weeks to grow out.
- Harrison H. Schmitt (Apollo 17)
pic
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
...next to the Maltese falcon.
I think Slashdot and all you foreigners should apologize for blatant Anti-Chinese bias! You try to make a bad image for China....not your country, not your business, but you must meddle in our affairs. I think you act out of jealousy because of China's advanced technology.
We rely on you to manufacture just about everything we use. It scares us, and it makes us insecure about ourselves. The lesser among us need to either deny the truth of our dependence upon you, or make you seem like primitive beasts of burden, or both.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Being the inventor of tech means nothing if your society is by default afraid of everything that science bestows upon us. This is why the US, inventor of nearly all the tech we use today, is giving way to China, the country which has the will to build everything we will be using tomorrow. Meanwhile, we can't even build a standard-issue high speed train between LA and San Francisco.
I'm as patriotic as the next guy - "go team USA" and all that - but I'm sad to hear that your rover is lost.
Space is not a zero-sum game. My country has decided that we're more interested in spending the dollars (that we constantly borrow from you) on social welfare programs, caring for old people, and floating eleven carrier groups in a world that doesn't have a single other navy that could fight ONE of them.
I'm looking forward to your next space accomplishment, as I truly believe such things help ALL people, ultimately.
-Styopa
I read that around the same time, Al-Qaeda had discovered a new vehicle to move their weapons of mass destruction. Code red, Kano!
Like a lot of things that "everyone knows" to be true, this isn't.
There has never been a person who has said anything to the effect of "the lesser among us need to deny the truth of what I'm saying" without inadvertently admitting that they're more insecure about the validity of that "truth" than the imaginary people they're referring to.
Stop whining and get your concepts straight. The US still leads pretty much everybody in advanced technology. China is playing catchup. They're playing a good game - not terribly surprising as their economy is pretty much the same size as ours and they have a more than a few smart, hardworking people. Yes, they steal our intellectual property. We steal theirs (and everybody else's). Get used to it.
However, they are world leaders in literally bulldozing the opposition. The major reason we can't build a high speed train between anywhere where you would want to build a high speed train is that there are things in the way. Buildings, roads and other annoyances. In China a few bribes and some physical / emotional threats to the less enthusiastic folks and you're there. In the US, where we still follow the rule of law most of the time, not so much.
The world is a complicated place. Certainly the shine on America is wearing off - it always was a thin layer of chrome. Happens to every society and civilization. China may be ascendant but it is not clear just how high they will go. China has a long, very long history of ups and downs.
Stay tuned.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
They can get the rover to the Moon but they can't get it to work. Meanwhile the United States has successfully put four rovers down on Mars without much issue. Sojourner, Opportunity, Spirit, and Curiosity. All of them deployed successfully and in the cases of Opportunity and Spirit both performed WELL beyond expectations.
And Curiosity is doing a bang up job too. I guess it sucks that the Chinese spies couldn't infiltrate the groups that developed those rovers.
WTF!!!!
I know lots of people are being bitter for getting bit in the ass by Obamacare...
I ain't no fan of the healthcare program. But we're talking about a science topic here... how the hell did you immediately redirect the topic to Barrack sucks???
The rover Opportunity is still truckin' along 10 full years later after landing 8-] (smug-faced smiley)
Alright, alright. India, Bangladesh and Taiwan also manufacture some stuff.
as a walmart shopper i am used to things made in China not working after a month and disappearing.
Spooky. I feel the fear.
The US leads everybody in their belief in astrology, and their disbelief in evolution as scientific fact.
The government is dominated by individuals that care more about enhancing their personal fortunes or agendas than about the long-term success of the country.
I don't think this bodes well for the future.
http://www.ecns.cn/z/2013/Laun... :p.
News of its death sadly premature
Did everyone see some photos or videos of what the rover did in the first month, apart from the one photo of the rover when it first landed? From the beginning it seems impossible to find any bit of information about this mission. Was this a kind of secret mission, or what? I mean, not every day someone is walking around on the moon.
And now it's apparently alive again .
I like your thoughts. Many people do not realize how much effort and time it takes to account for the unknown.
-bastcastula
Man, if you think that Americans believe in weird stuff, you should spend some time looking around modern Chinese culture. Rhino Horns? Vaguely phallic quasi edible marine life? Lucky numbers?
We're just posers.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Cant wait to hear how many manufacturers get shot (paying for their own bullet) for this PR failure which makes China look worse than just being 45 years late.
They still can launch more of them (have to move the schedule up a year) to try again. What animal is next year ??
Do you know how many times the US and Russia failed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
But not anything we actually need. We let them make toys. Meanwhile, we feed them.
But not anything we actually need. We let them make toys. Meanwhile, we feed them.
Is the weather nice in the dream world you live in?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
if you want respect you gotta earn it.
it doesn't help that ,historically speaking, China has been everyones bitch.
demanding respect has about as much chance of winning it as i do of winning the lottery.
China has given up on even trying to be agriculturally self-sufficient. They've more than doubled the amount of food they import from the US since 2008.
Meanwhile, we are far and away the world's biggest exporter of food. There's also the little matter of the massive scientific contributions we've made to agricultural output worldwide. Norman Borlaug alone saved over a billion lives with his work. You may want to deny this fact, but India doesn't, which is why they awarded him the Padma Vibhushan in 2006.
Without them, our toys are more expensive.
Without us, they starve to death by the millions.
And you know it.
Now, boy, what was that you were saying about dream worlds?