NASA and China's Yutu Rover Are Still Making Discoveries On the Moon (examiner.com)

MarkWhittington writes: The last time men walked on the moon was during the flight of Apollo 17, 43 Decembers ago. According to a story in Forbes, lunar soil and rock samples returned by the last moonwalkers are still yielding new insights into the history and nature of Earth's nearest neighbor. In the meantime, the latest explorer to go to the moon, a Chinese robotic rover named Yutu has made some discoveries of its own.

Comments

Has anybody found

[rossdee]

A Monolith

Re:Huh, imagine that

[CrimsonAvenger]

We don't actually need to send people to a far away, dead hostile rock? Just send boxes on wheels, and have them fly back the dead rocks the geeks like to fantasize about, like Luna 16.

Frankly, if people aren't going to go there, why bother sending the box on wheels? Not like the composition of moon rocks matters, really (absent some need to mine them, of course, which pretty much means "people in outer space", since there's no shortage of metals to mine here on Earth).

Re:I must have been sick that day.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you just have not been paying attention:
http://www.space.com/28810-moon-history-chinese-lunar-rover.html

For that matter the GRAIL experiment has done more to expose the inner structure of the Moon than either of the points raised in the article
http://www.space.com/18780-grail-moon-gravity-map.html

Too bad robots couldn't do what people could

[RoverDaddy]

Are you aware that the three Russian robotic sample missions returned just a few hundred -grams- of lunar soil, while the Apollo manned flights returned hundreds of -kilograms-? The later lunar astronauts were also able to study geology before their flights and actually make intelligent decisions about -what- samples to return. Hardly the same level of achievement or the same scientific value. It would be really sad if all we had were the 326 grams of lunar soil returned by the Luna missions.

Re:Fuck Forbes

[Ol Olsoc]

According to a story in Forbes

Naaaaah.

PS It's the same article you linked to just a few days ago.

And since Forbes wont let you in if you are running an adblocker, now there is a really good reason to not RTFA.

How about rovers on Moon instead of Mars?

[k6mfw]

Though everyone loves Mars and those rovers are exciting, I was thinking how cool it would be to have a modern lunar rover with the HD cameras. OK, Chinese placed Yutu which I haven't followed its news that much.

While US has spent billions on Mars rovers, why not use that expertise to deploy lunar rovers (oh wait, policy is to avoid talking about the Moon). Imagine a rover to go to those craters where the sun never shines to sample soil for ice? A rover to visit Saturn V third stage impact areas? Or better yet a rover to visit Apollo landing sites and take really good pictures (though quality will be so good many luddites will claim it's proof those landings were done at Area 51). It would be also interesting to see how solar radiation has changed composition of the Apollo hardware (how much of the colors are left on the flags?).

Paul Spudis commented rover visiting Apollo sites will be very interesting, however, US prohibits disturbing Apollo landing sites. But if rover was an international program?

Heh, I was thinking of a Kelly Freas painting, what if they visit an Apollo 15, 16, or 17 site and find the Apollo rover is not there. But its tracks go off into the horizon. So this new rover follows the tracks and then finds the Apollo rover (where it ended when batteries spent) up on blocks with all the good stuff stripped from it.