News How to screw up a moon landing.

[jefferz]

They say they have about 7 days to try to get more data back before that part of the moon will be in total darkness and the temperatures will drop to near absolute 0. They don't think the electronics will survive that. Once that area of the moon gets back in sunlight, the small solar panels can slowly collect light and charge the batteries, they will try to get in contact with it if possible. In the meantime they are trying to recover as much data as possible before the site goes dark.

The Voyager spacecraft used radioactive material to power an electric generator and both are still sending back data The CCS computer used has been running continuously since 1977.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Voyager hasn't been able to send data back since December.
They almost lost Voyager 2 back in July. NASA was making a telemetry adjustment, and messed up. They did a last ditch high power radio burst, and managed to barely catch Voyager 2.

 

[GSP_37]

Does no-one watch Robot wars ?

Do those robots have functioning erections?

 

[GSP_37]

Actually a good way to screw up the landing is if Microsoft Windows suddenly decides to run Windows Modules Installer Worker on their computer and slows it down to a crawl for several hours and they can't send any emergency instructions or impromptu on the fly brand new coding.

 

[ralphc1]

Actually a good way to screw up the landing is if Microsoft Windows suddenly decides to run Windows Modules Installer Worker on their computer and slows it down to a crawl for several hours and they can't send any emergency instructions or impromptu on the fly brand new coding.

Yes, that would be a perfect time for Windows to decide to upgrade.

 

[Bia]

did they recently hired an Ex Boeing employee?

 

[Belaya Smert]

Looks too heavy AF. Science harder you guys

 

[Fuglee]

Does no-one watch Robot wars ?

Seriously though battle bots solved this problem 15 years ago

 

[GSP_37]

Yes, that would be a perfect time for Windows to decide to upgrade.

I'm not talking upgrade version of Windows, but some unknown background shit where you wouldn't know it unless you experience extreme slow down and go into Task Manager and see what's using up your CPU and disk. This happened on my computer a bunch of times even after already installing the month's OS updates. I cannot imagine slowing down people's computers on a regular basis is what Microsoft would consider a success and deserving of a raise and promotion.

 

[JoeyJoeJoeJr]

its crazy how flimsy and terrible the designs fpr the moon landers are, they look like flimsy crap designed by an 8 year old

 

[Van Daz]

The latest moon landing apparently was screwed up by neglecting to switch a safety switch on the laser rangefinder system. They are trying to put the SpaceX spin on this. Their best guess to the IM lander situation is that it was moving sideways and landed at higher speeds than intended so they think it's laying on it's side like the Japanese lander did. The antennas that they use to transfer data aren't in the proper orientation. The lander is still alive and they hope to get pictures from it before the sun moves.

After watching the video of the press conference, it seems that the laser rangefinder system they used had a safety switch to prevent it coming on without notice during the build stage. The mechanical switch was supposed to be turned on before loading the craft for launch. They were lucky to find out about it before the landing. The craft was not orbiting as expected so the laser range finder was activated earlier than normal to check the orbital distance when they found it wasn't working. They had a NASA experiment on board that was also capable of measuring range but they had to come up with software to patch it into the guidance system after delaying the launch for another orbit. That experiment wasn't taking readings from as many places as the original system. The change might have had some effect on how the landing ended up.

It's about 37 minutes into the video where they start describing the problem but the entire video is worth watching.

Perfect moon landing under cover.

 

[moreorless87]

So privately funded moon landings still 100% failure rate?

 

[ralphc1]

So privately funded moon landings still 100% failure rate?

They follow the SpaceX model that there are no failures. At least they made it to the moon to fall over.