Lunar Landings News and Discussions

[weatheriscool]

China's Chang’e-6 Lander Is Almost Ready to Sample Far Side of the Moon
This is a follow-up to 2020's Chang’e-5, which returned samples from the Earth-facing side of the Moon.
By Ryan Whitwam January 12, 2024
https://www.extremetech.com/science/chi ... f-the-moon

After decades of neglect, humanity is again shooting for the Moon—NASA hopes to return humans to the lunar surface in a few years, and numerous countries have ramped up efforts to land robotic explorers, with surprisingly limited success. China's Chang’e missions have been a bright spot, with Chang’e-5 bringing back the first samples of lunar soil in decades. Now, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) says the follow-up Chang’e-6 has arrived at the launch site for final testing before it heads off to collect samples from the far side of the Moon.

Chang’e-5 reached the lunar surface in 2020, an event that we might not have sufficiently appreciated at the time. In the intervening years, we've seen both public and private Moon landers crash into Earth's satellite, including Russia's Luna-25 and the US Peregrine lander from Astrobotic. Chang’e-5 successfully collected 1.7 kilograms of dust from the Moon and sent it back to Earth. Chang’e-6 will perform a similar operation on the far side of the Moon (above), which has only been visited a handful of times and from which we have no samples.

[caltrek]

Nasa Peregrine 1: US lander will not make it to moon’s surface due to fuel leak

...

https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... -fuel-leak

More on that:

Five Small Robots Developed in Mexico Deployed to Deep Space on First Ever Moon Mission
by Regina Sienra
January 12, 2024

Introduction:

(My Modern Met) The world has been paying close attention to the launch of Astrobotic's Peregrine moon lander, aimed to be the first private lunar mission to touch down successfully on the Moon. Unfortunately, a propulsion issue caused a significant propellant leak. As a result, Peregrine will not achieve a soft landing on the Moon, according to NASA. But not all hope is lost for the projects on board. Peregrine happens to be carrying Colmena, Mexico's first-ever Moon mission. And despite the setbacks, the project has already achieved several wins.

The Colmena mission consists of five autonomous micro-robots, which measure just 4 inches in diameter and weigh 2 ounces each. Colmena, which means “beehive” in Spanish, references the worker bee's process, indicating that these tiny devices are ready to work as a team. Developed by the Laboratory of Special Instruments (LINX) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the project launched back in 2015, when it was first pitched to Astrobiotic and selected alongside 19 other projects from NASA, as well as the UK, Japan, and Germany. Fast forward nine years, and with the aid of 250 students who helped create the robots, the mission has finally been brought to life.

The key to their success is size. Gustavo Medina, Colmena mission leader and head of LINX, told El País that devices this small have never been operated in space. This was what caught Astrobotic's attention and may be a game changer in the future. “Instead of sending a large machine to extract a mineral, which costs a lot and if it breaks down everything is lost, we can send 100,000 tiny robots; and if one dies, nothing happens,” he explains. “The project can resist. That's the philosophy.”

The robots are enclosed in what Medina describes as a “cookie package,” which would later work as a catapult. Since there's nothing to offload the robots, the catapult would throw them 30 to 50 feet away from the lander—enough to escape the shade of the lander to get their solar panels to work and getting coordinates from where their pals landed, so they can get to work.

Read more here: https://mymodernmet.com/colmena-unam-m ... -lander/

[firestar464]

Ailing Peregrine Moon Lander Is on Course to Crash into Earth

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... nto-earth/
https://archive.is/fuWlf

The title is misleading, as the article ends up stating that it'll burn up in the atmosphere.

[raklian]

[weatheriscool]

Japan's 'Moon Sniper' Set for Wild Lunar Landing Friday
The SLIM lander team at JAXA will have to suffer through '20 minutes of terror' while they wait to see if the probe survives.
By Ryan Whitwam January 18, 2024
https://www.extremetech.com/science/jap ... ing-friday

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is hoping to end the pattern of failed lunar landings this week. The agency's SLIM mission has reached lunar orbit and is preparing for its descent on Friday morning. This spacecraft will test a new landing system, which could drop the lander with unparalleled precision—and hopefully in one piece.

SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) is headed for Shioli crater, which is believed to be a relatively new feature on the Moon. Previous orbital observations suggest there is ejecta from the impact strewn around the rim, and it may contain olivine and other minerals from the Moon's crust. SLIM hopes to get close enough to this debris to conduct analysis, something that other landers would not be able to do safely.

[wjfox]

LIVE: Japan's 'Moon Sniper' attempting to land on lunar surface

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/science ... t-68019846

– If successful, it would make Japan only the fifth country to land on the Moon after the US, the former Soviet Union, China and India

[wjfox]

1m ago
17.17 GMT

Japanese probe landed on moon but not generating solar power, space agency says

The Slim spacecraft landed on the moon and is communicating with earth but is not generating electricity via its solar panels, a Japanese space agency official says.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/liv ... ws-updates

[raklian]

1m ago
17.17 GMT

Japanese probe landed on moon but not generating solar power, space agency says

The Slim spacecraft landed on the moon and is communicating with earth but is not generating electricity via its solar panels, a Japanese space agency official says.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/liv ... ws-updates

Makes us appreciate how we managed to pull off the Apollo Moon landings.

[weatheriscool]

Laser instrument on NASA's LRO successfully pings Indian moon lander
https://phys.org/news/2024-01-laser-ins ... fully.html
by Lonnie Shekhtman, NASA

For the first time at the moon, a laser beam was transmitted and reflected between an orbiting NASA spacecraft and an Oreo-sized device on ISRO's (Indian Space Research Organization) Vikram lander on the lunar surface. The successful experiment opens the door to a new style of precisely locating targets on the moon's surface.

At 3 p.m. EST on Dec. 12, 2023, NASA's LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) pointed its laser altimeter instrument toward Vikram. The lander was 62 miles, or 100 kilometers, away from LRO, near Manzinus crater in the moon's south pole region, when LRO transmitted laser pulses toward it. After the orbiter registered light that had bounced back from a tiny NASA retroreflector aboard Vikram, NASA scientists knew their technique had finally worked.

Sending laser pulses toward an object and measuring how long it takes the light to bounce back is a commonly used way to track the locations of Earth-orbiting satellites from the ground. But using the technique in reverse—to send laser pulses from a moving spacecraft to a stationary one to determine its precise location—has many applications at the moon, scientists say.

"We've showed that we can locate our retroreflector on the surface from the moon's orbit," said Xiaoli Sun, who led the team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, that developed the retroreflector on Vikram as part of a partnership between NASA and ISRO. "The next step is to improve the technique so that it can become routine for missions that want to use these retroreflectors in the future."

[wjfox]

Japan hopes sunlight can save stricken Slim Moon lander

47 minutes ago

Japan may yet manage to salvage its Moon lander, the country's space agency Jaxa says - if sunlight hits it in the right place.

The Slim spacecraft was turned off just three hours after its historic lunar touchdown on Saturday to save power.

Engineers had realised its solar cells were pointing west, away from the Sun, and could not generate electricity.

But the mission team is now hopeful the situation could improve as lighting conditions shift.

"If sunlight hits the Moon from the west in the future, we believe there's a possibility of power generation, and we're currently preparing for restoration," the Jaxa statement read.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68055186



Credit: JAXA