NYTimes subtitle says "The country will likely have to wait for a future mission to join the elite club of nations that have landed on the moon."
Wikipedia for Chandrayaan-1 says "On 14 November 2008, the [Chandrayaan-1 probe] struck the south pole in a controlled manner, making India the fourth country to place its flag insignia on the Moon"
NYT seems to have taken BBC's place in throwing shade towards the Indian space program. From the article:
"...The outcomes of the Indian and Israeli missions highlight that lower costs can mean higher risk of failure, which NASA will need to adjust to as it pursues a lower-cost approach...."
Sites like NYT or BBC are highly inept at reporting anything remotely technical in nature. They are good for general political coverage to an extent, but that's where it stops. This is more apparent when the subject matter is closer to our areas of expertise, but even otherwise, it is not too hard to tell that they are out of their depth.
Apparently Russia was supposed to build the lander but backed out after one of their other landers crashed, which they were basing the Indian one on. So India built their own.
> Although ISRO finalised the payload for Chandrayaan-2 per schedule,[37] the mission was postponed in January 2013[38] and rescheduled to 2016 because Russia was unable to develop the lander on time.[39][40] Roscosmos later withdrew in wake of the failure of the Fobos-Grunt mission to Mars, since the technical aspects connected with the Fobos-Grunt mission were also used in the lunar projects, which needed to be reviewed.[39] When Russia cited its inability to provide the lander even by 2015, India decided to develop the lunar mission independently.
Chandrayaan-1 was an impact lander, so it landed on the Moon in a "controlled manner" (ie on purpose). Apparently the lander was painted with the Indian flag[1].
The official news announced by the ISRO chairman on the live broadcast was "the last signal received from the lander was 2.1 KM from the lunar surface. Data is being analyzed as of now".
This is a dumb question but are telemetry intervals that far apart ? No data was sent in the last 2.1 KMs ? Or something at that level caused systems to fail immediately. Space is hard.
On this livestream https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcJwjuo8pBo a commentator explains that the probe had some autonomy in choosing exactly where to land. So the deviation from the expected course was not necessarily something going wrong.
Edit: Apparently it can hover at 400m for up to 90 seconds to image the potential landing site. The loss of communication actually happened before the hovering phase started.
IMO something like this is a true measure of technological advancement of a nation. This means India is roughly as technologically advanced as the US was 60 years ago, which is impressive by any measure, since space-related things haven't progressed all that much since then. They got super close this time. In a couple more attempts they'll figure it out if they don't run out of money. I hope Modi sees the potential to inspire the nation. For 10 cents per person, inspiring people to take up science is a no-brainer.
> this is a true measure of technological advancement of a nation
That's an interesting point and worth further analysis. But, just to probe a little, that would imply that US and USSR were technically equally advanced in the 60s.
Is that true?
Moreover, what about nations that have not invested much in space at all, but otherwise are probably doing well from technical advancement standpoint.
This is certainly a measure, but is it the measure?
Modi is definitely investing in space, with the manned mission in a couple of years. I just hope this doesn't impact that.
The USSR was the first to land on the moon and send images back (in 1966), but ever since the US landed people there, they were technologically behind, albeit not very far behind. They could have done it, but with Americans flying there twice a year, the race was already lost. So they sent some large robotic landers instead (Lunokhod 1 and 2), the kind that are the size of a VW beetle and are designed to survive the night. Unlike manned missions, which lasted at most 3 days, Lunokhod 2 was active on the surface of the moon for 4 months, traveled 42km, and sent back 80000 pictures.
> Modi is definitely investing in space, with the manned mission in a couple of years. I just hope this doesn't impact that.
Are you serious? All these projects were funded since UPA2 time. This craft was to go in 2013 but Russia backed out so postponed to 2016.
Same story with Mars Orbiter Mission
I don't think Modi has any money left after his disasterous economic policies which have brought an economic slowdown. Also if he is funding space missions they'll fly in 2025 or so because building those missions takes time
It is probably a lot easier to do it today than it was 60 years ago when no one had done it. I think it is possible even for a well-funded private company (like Spacex) to at least come close if they thought it was worth it
Readit News
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/science/india-moon-landin...
Edit:
NYTimes subtitle says "The country will likely have to wait for a future mission to join the elite club of nations that have landed on the moon."
Wikipedia for Chandrayaan-1 says "On 14 November 2008, the [Chandrayaan-1 probe] struck the south pole in a controlled manner, making India the fourth country to place its flag insignia on the Moon"
.. huh?
Edit 2: Ah, impact landing vs soft landing.
"...The outcomes of the Indian and Israeli missions highlight that lower costs can mean higher risk of failure, which NASA will need to adjust to as it pursues a lower-cost approach...."
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
> Although ISRO finalised the payload for Chandrayaan-2 per schedule,[37] the mission was postponed in January 2013[38] and rescheduled to 2016 because Russia was unable to develop the lander on time.[39][40] Roscosmos later withdrew in wake of the failure of the Fobos-Grunt mission to Mars, since the technical aspects connected with the Fobos-Grunt mission were also used in the lunar projects, which needed to be reviewed.[39] When Russia cited its inability to provide the lander even by 2015, India decided to develop the lunar mission independently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-2?oldformat=true
1: https://web.archive.org/web/20090112054329/http://economicti...
In all probability indicates a crash landing.
Edit: Apparently it can hover at 400m for up to 90 seconds to image the potential landing site. The loss of communication actually happened before the hovering phase started.
Official site:
https://www.isro.gov.in/chandrayaan2-latest-updates
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iqNTeZAq-c
Damn it Moon! Stop eating our drones!
Deleted Comment
That's an interesting point and worth further analysis. But, just to probe a little, that would imply that US and USSR were technically equally advanced in the 60s.
Is that true?
Moreover, what about nations that have not invested much in space at all, but otherwise are probably doing well from technical advancement standpoint.
This is certainly a measure, but is it the measure?
Modi is definitely investing in space, with the manned mission in a couple of years. I just hope this doesn't impact that.
Are you serious? All these projects were funded since UPA2 time. This craft was to go in 2013 but Russia backed out so postponed to 2016.
Same story with Mars Orbiter Mission
I don't think Modi has any money left after his disasterous economic policies which have brought an economic slowdown. Also if he is funding space missions they'll fly in 2025 or so because building those missions takes time