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Japan’s ‘moon sniper’ probe made incredibly accurate landing, but is now upside down (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/nottheonion

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Nevertheless, space officials are describing the mission as a success, despite the fact that the probe, nicknamed the “moon sniper”, appears to have tumbled down a crater slope, leaving its solar batteries facing in the wrong direction and unable to generate electricity.

So it’s like that time the SpaceX booster exploded near its landing craft due to missing it by meters?

[–] Balex 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I don't know why people insist on trying to diss SpaceX anytime there's space news... Anyway, last time they missed the Autonomous Drone Ship was years ago when they were first trying to land. So I'm not exactly sure what you are referring to.

Plus, with space missions there are usually many different mission objectives, and with this mission the main mission was to "demonstrate its highly precise navigation and landing system" which they determined to be a success. The extra credit mission would be if it landed properly and they were able to do more science with it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I wasn't insulting SpaceX, and don't see why you think I am. I'm just making a comparison to better understand the situation. What you've described makes the two events all the more similar.

[–] Balex 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Fair enough. I've just been jaded from reading people bash on SpaceX anytime anything in space "fails". But yeah, those events are similar in the sense that on the surface it looks like a failure, but they met their main mission goal and learned a lot from it. It sounds like the engine issue might've happened for them before, so hopefully they got a lot of good data from this and are able to fix the issue.

It's important to keep in mind that going to space is very hard. Landing on another celestial body is order of magnitudes harder.

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