SLIM survives its second lunar night, re-establishes contact
Click for original image.
According to Japan’s space agency JAXA, the SLIM lunar lander has successfully survived its long night on the Moon, re-establishiing contact with ground controllers yesterday.
Last night, we received a response from #SLIM, confirming that the spacecraft made it through the lunar night for the second time! Since the sun was still high and the equipment was still hot, we only took some shots of the usual scenery with the navigation camera
One of those pictures is to the right, reduced slightly to post here. It looks west across the floor of Shioli Crater, with the far rim about a thousand feet away. The picture is identical to previous images, tilted because the spacecraft landed on its side and has limited scientific capabilities, being primarily an engineering test mission.
That this engineering test has now survived two lunar nights speaks well for its design. It tells us that future Japanese lunar landers (and rovers) will have a good chance of surviving for a long time on the Moon.
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In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
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Click for original image.
According to Japan’s space agency JAXA, the SLIM lunar lander has successfully survived its long night on the Moon, re-establishiing contact with ground controllers yesterday.
Last night, we received a response from #SLIM, confirming that the spacecraft made it through the lunar night for the second time! Since the sun was still high and the equipment was still hot, we only took some shots of the usual scenery with the navigation camera
One of those pictures is to the right, reduced slightly to post here. It looks west across the floor of Shioli Crater, with the far rim about a thousand feet away. The picture is identical to previous images, tilted because the spacecraft landed on its side and has limited scientific capabilities, being primarily an engineering test mission.
That this engineering test has now survived two lunar nights speaks well for its design. It tells us that future Japanese lunar landers (and rovers) will have a good chance of surviving for a long time on the Moon.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Curious Droid has some thoughts on why it is so hard for us to land on the Moon, despite having done so several times half a century ago:
“Why is it Still So Hard to Land on the Moon?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ2B8uJ4kpA (16 minutes)
Edward: He celebrates today’s complexity as if it is all good, when another perspective could be that it adds variables that makes things much harder.
“it adds variables that makes things much harder.”
Do you mean, to use Paul Shillito’s analogy with cars from the 1960s to the cars of today, that we once could repair our own cars but now can hardly find the dip stick? Or that repairs used to be inexpensive but today cost close to a month’s rent?
Shillito’s conclusion, however, was: “So in answer to the question, why is it so difficult to land on the Moon, it is because we have simply left for a long time and we have to start again to catch up on the fifty-year gap. If we had continued with the Moon missions after Apollo, the changes would have been more gradual as new tech became available.”
We most likely would have tested the new tech along with the existing, working tech, and fewer problems would have come up. Newer technologies have their advantages, otherwise we would not employ them, but there are some disadvantages that also come with them. For example, we solved the problem of road apples in the streets (horse stuff everywhere) along with the smell and the fear of tetanus, but now we fear the exhaust from cars is bringing on the next Ice Age — er — catastrophic global warming — or rather — climate change, which is a real thing (“this time for sure!” — Bullwinkle Moose).
Shillito points out some advantages to advancing the tech and making things more complex. We have built space stations — even complex ones — sent probes to the outer planets and into the Sun’s corona, orbited telescopes with very high resolution and ability to see far distances (farther back in time — yes, we have time machines), and we have landed small rovers on Mars with simple landings and large ones with complex landings. Plus, we have reusable boosters, reducing the cost and greatly increasing the launch cadence (so far this year more than half of all launches and far more than half the mass lifted to orbit have been on these inexpensive, reusable, high cadence launch vehicles). The tech may be expensive, but it is reducing the overall costs and increasing the overall capabilities.
Well, maybe not in cars.
Edward: A very long time ago I learned the value of the motto, “Keep it simple, stupid.” That doesn’t mean you reject all new technology or concepts, it means you apply thought before jumping in wildly. Sometimes that new technology creates more problems than it solves, while driving up costs and increasing complexity. Musk’s version of this same perspective is his line, “The best part is no part.”
I will tell a story. I have been a cave cartographer since the 1980s, producing many maps of very large cave systems, ranging in size from one to eight miles in length. In doing those maps (and finishing them and getting them published) I used pencil and ink to draw everything. Only when it came time to add text would I get the map scanned to work digitally.
Since the 2000s. I can’t tell you the number of cavers (almost all of whom were engineers) who insisted I could do it better and faster if I did everything digitally, using software. I would tell them that no, that though the technology had great potential and was cool, it simply wasn’t that good, and would simply either slow me down, or force me to produce sub-quality maps.
These people repeatedly scoffed at me, but meanwhile their digital maps remained unfinished, and I continued to finish many very large maps, the hardest to do. As computers and software improved, I would incrementally shift more tasks to the computer. Even so, even now I think it is still faster to draw the map by pencil first, than ink it later.
There is another aspect of this that hinges on software. Some might be able to come close now to matching my speed, but based on the modern digital maps I see, they simply don’t look as good. Digital maps all look the same. If I was to put three such maps before you made by three different people, I doubt you could tell them apart. None have the individualistic style that a person will bring to it.
The work of past cartographers however is clearly recognizable. Anyone who looks at one of my maps and has seen my other work will instantly know my style, and be able to guess it is my work. The work of these past cartographers have a feel for art and beauty, put in by the hand of the person who drew it.
Computer software can’t do that.
We should all think about this when we read about how wonderful AI is. Because it isn’t.
“We should all think about this when we read about how wonderful AI is. Because it isn’t.?”
Well, artificial intelligence isn’t smart enough to not help students cheat on their term papers or not help scam artists. Despite the hype, it still only does curve fitting.
I think that Shillito’s conclusion is still valid. Had we been adding new tech over the past 50 years, what is being done now would not be suddenly new. We learned to land on Mars a little at a time, adding new tech as it was needed. No longer do we land on bouncing balloons, no longer do we have seven minutes of terror. The seven minutes for Curiosity was because there was such a jump in tech that they could not be sure it would work. But it did, and now we are confident that we can land heavy payloads and landers on Mars.
Your comparison of the current attempts to land on the Moon with your friends who thought the new software would reduce their own labor is analogous. Your friends jumped in, yet you tested it and found it wanting. Had we continued lunar missions, we would have tested the new tech and discovered which were not yet ready for prime time and which were rock-star quality.
One reason to use new technologies is to land in more interesting locations on the Moon. If we only have methods that cannot avoid rocks and borders, then we are severely limited in our choice of landing sites. If we are not going to improve and advance, then what is the point?