
India locates lander lost on final approach to moon - oblib
https://apnews.com/8533918d2dd348d6819057968182c6f4
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dang
All: please don't take this thread, or any other HN thread, into nationalistic
flamewar. It breaks the site guidelines and is off topic here.

If your comment might contain flamebait, please edit it until it clearly
doesn't.

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pattisapu
Thank you for consistently and tirelessly following through on these
guidelines throughout.

It is hard work and we (well, many of us) appreciate it.

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hu3
More information on the video here:
[https://www.indiatoday.in/science/chandrayaan-2-mission/vide...](https://www.indiatoday.in/science/chandrayaan-2-mission/video/chandrayaan2-orbiter-
locates-lander-vikram-on-moon-yet-to-establish-contact-1596866-2019-09-08)

It was located via thermal image which I find interesting for something that
far away.

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z92
It was spotted from the satellite which carried it there and is now orbiting
the moon. Not too far I guess.

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droithomme
That's actually a pretty great accomplishment to find it so quickly. When
Apollo 11's Eagle was on the moon no one could figure out where it was. The
orbiter couldn't spot it and mission control had all these detailed maps and
telemetry and couldn't get the right spot based on data and descriptions from
the astronauts of what they were looking at. Seeing something on the moon is
hard.

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rjsw
Something designed as an unmanned orbiter will have better sensors than a "man
in a can" like the Apollo Command Module.

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z92
Also the 50 years factor. Digital camera that we use today started to sell in
the market at around year 2000. And then those were only VGA resolution
640x480 pixel.

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woodandsteel
Landing on extraterrestrial objects is really difficult. Even the US, which is
the champion at this, has had a number of failures. I trust the Indian
engineers will figure out what went wrong, keep trying, and eventually
succeed, maybe on the very next mission.

Also, the mission includes an orbiter with a number of scientific instruments
for studying the Moon which is still going strong.

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kerng
What a bummer. Would be cool if it survived. Let's see, hope they can figure
out details and share learnings.

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thewhitetulip
They are going to try to connect with the rover for 15days.

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qubex
“It must’ve been a hard landing.”

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raverbashing
According to this video
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xKJG00-S_c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xKJG00-S_c),
end velocity was probably around 100m/s (also that the lander started tumbling
at the end stage)

I have the impression that would leave a big mark

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rkagerer
Love Scott Manley's videos. Wonder how long 'till we get a re-enactment in
KSP.

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brij0102
Any chance the rover might have survived? Also I wish it was more a ball than
a shape that could tip over!

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ralusek
After seeing the way the Pakistani minister of science was tweeting about
this, then the negative comments like the one in this very thread by an
account created 6 minutes ago, I can't help but assume that the enemies of
India must represent the majority of the negative sentiment about this
attempt.

ISRO should be very proud of their accomplishments. The people saying that
India should worry about their starving population first and foremost don't
understand that:

a.) populations feed themselves, there is no government on Earth that has ever
successfully fed its population

b.) ISRO has been able to recover a large part of its costs by launching
foreign payloads

c.) ISRO provides non-bureaucratic pencil pushing jobs for Indians, in
particular the sorts of jobs for some of the brightest Indians who would
otherwise be very likely to leave the country for better prospects

d.) We all benefit from the sort of science being done here, today

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negamax
Actually it's not as much as enemies of India. I have seen fairly negative
comments about India's accomplishments from neutral folks.

My own understanding is that India's rise makes people uncomfortable because
they can no longer think that there's this mass of people who's worse off than
them. India's accomplishments challenge their worldview and their place in it.
I have indeed noticed this trend amongst people who aren't well off
themselves. They are extra vocal and vicious in their attacks.

Earlier, this used to affect me. And I would try to correct them, even have
arguments. But I have accepted this now. India and others should just ignore
them as it's not really a constructive criticism and double down on all growth
attempts

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SomeOldThrow
There may also be bad sentiment leaking over from the media blackout and
ethnic cleansing in Kashmir. FWIW I think that’s silly and stupid to take it
out on the space agency, but it’s also human.

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infiniteseeker
As per guidelines.."Please don't use HN for racial or national or religious or
ethnic or any other kind of flamebait. This is all off topic for HN, and we
ban accounts that post like this repeatedly."

Im gonna say it because Dang apparently isnt (to this comment)

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birdyrooster
Thank you. I want to add an aside here: I have chronically abused the rules of
this site in the past. I was ignorant as to the mission of Hacker News and how
it can help me! I realized that my ideas are worth having a slow, measured
conversation punctuated by facts and understanding of other views just as well
as my own. I was falling into a trap of politicizing truth and losing my way
in the process.

I’m thankful dang gave me the opportunity to change.

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known
I think something gone wrong in estimating
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitation_of_the_Moon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitation_of_the_Moon)
and/or
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field_of_the_Moon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field_of_the_Moon)

And I suspect ISRO compromised on critical aspects during simulation due to
cost cutting.

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LyndsySimon
Do you have any evidence to support your assertions of this being a likely
cause, or that cost cutting could be to blame?

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userbinator
One of the prominent claims about the mission is its low cost, which makes
that a reasonable hypothesis.

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nitinreddy88
This implies nothing. We have more man power with low pays compared to US.

We have launched many more successful launches which cost nothing compared to
NASA

