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.
I'm not even sure they do political coverage too well. From the outside it appears the editors live in an insular world that doesn't feel anything like the one outside. They do cover a lot of things, I feel they'd do better if they focused on fewer things but more 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].
You still get video and sensor readings from the flight, you get a dust plume to analyze from a distance (especially with bigger impactors also giving you data about what's below the surface).
Even making it that far is a testament to the prowess of your space organization. It's a cheaper first step which probably directly and indirectly tests some 75% of the components needed for an actual landing.
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.
Spacecraft definitely do not move "very, very fast" in the terminal stages of landing, especially not on a low gravity object like the Moon. Apollo 11, for instance, spent several minutes below 2.1km altitude prior to touchdown. Soft landings on the Moon are slow events, and given that telemetry is essentially continuous, something must have gone wrong at around 2.1km.
Although the something going wrong could be as innocuous as losing antenna alignment, which happens often during landings even when nothing is really wrong, because the spacecraft is changing pitch to effect the landing.
So my best guess would be loss of telemetry due to loss of antenna alignment, followed by a bad trajectory for some reason, followed by unintentional lithobraking.
Per Twitter, it seems like something went wrong during the braking burn. The spacecraft was left tumbling (which certainly wouldn't help antenna alignment), and was thus unable to effect its landing burn.
No idea yet exactly what caused the tumbling; there's a variety of potential causes.
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
Your statement about trains is not correct. US rail is optimized for transporting goods rather than people and overall does a good job. It is also quite profitable. For example, the Union Pacific 10-K shows a healthy profit for FY 2018. [0]
One recent stat I found claimed that in the US 43% of freight travels by rail whereas in the EU it's only 10%. [1] European highways are consequently choked with trucks, something you notice pretty quickly if you drive in countries like Germany. It's easy to overlook, though, when traveling in one of their nice passenger trains. :)
Congratulations, you've slayed a strawman. It's pretty clear both the OP and myself were talking about passenger trains, which in the US can't be operated at a profit.
It's apples to oranges. The US rail network is optimized to solve another problem. The evidence I've seen indicates that US freight transport by rail is among the most efficient in the world. It's hard to adduce it as an example of technical failure.
Even on your terms of debate I think you need to cite evidence of overall profitability of passenger trains in other countries. Deutsche Bahn (DB) makes some money but depends on substantial subsidies from the German government. [0] Wikipedia shows that most passenger rail seems to be heavily subsidized, though interestingly not Japan. [1]
4:42 EST - Some communication between lander and orbiter
4:47 - Official statement => Communication between lander and ground station was lost at 2.1 km altitude. There was no mention of earlier communication between lander and orbiter.
The calendar ? It's not really a 'clock app' but lets you setup timers and popup notifications. You're right it should be baked in with the system clock.
The mission has been executed on a shoe string budget. More than outsourcing, a partnership will be more beneficial. NASA's advanced Technology and ISRO's low costs could be explored.
The scientific payloads of missions (development, design, manufacturing, operation, analysis) are usually a large percentage of the total mission's cost. It's worth looking at the exact scientific capabilities of a mission while comparing it with the cost. It's amazing how economically the Indians sent a probe to Mars, but its scientific capabilities were far smaller than the billion dollar NASA missions.
I think he meant use ISRO's operations to send NASA's probes, rovers, satellites etc. for missions like these. NASA still gets to study and conduct experiments at a lower cost.
Ok you mean now lets handover the dirty job of logistics from Earth to Space to Indians and liberate NASA to focus on more important things. Good Idea!
I didn't mean to twist the topic. I don't see any other benefit of outsourcing. IMO NASA can't afford to pay it's scientists to think about getting something from point A on earth to point B in outer space anymore.
The problem space of space is infinitely large. Outsourcing some parts mean that you can focus on others. Every space agency and company on Earth do not need to work on the exact same problems, that’s all.
The Deep Space Network shows that it's transmitting to Vikram, and two antennas are task with listening to it, but it's not receiving a signal. That's not good.
I've been watching for a few minutes. It appeared to do a weird roll during braking, and then the line of descent greatly varied from the anticipated line. The room was jubilant prior to this, and now very somber.
Hopefully there will be good news. But I think it crashed.
That's the problem with simply losing communication. It's not positive evidence of a crash, it's just a lack of information. Possibly the landing jostled antennas or power relays causing a communications glitch... but you can't rule out that it just crashed :(
It happened before landing, so while the probe may have crashed, a crash did not cause the communications loss. Here are the most similar conditions I could find that recovered: Beresheet regained communications before landing but not in time to save the mission. Rosetta's Philae lander ended up in a bad spot and couldn't communicate much because of low solar power. Hayabusa had comms trouble when it was supposed to launch from its asteroid, but recovered.
Buddy in the video explained that the reason there are 5 in use instead of just 4 for landing was to keep the dust clouds from obscuring the camera footage.
Yes, a stream of high-speed particles flying away from landing site can obscure the ground. It is unlikely that such a stream will be deflected by some rocks to obscure antennas.
As of yet unnamed, according to an article linked within the article. [0]
> It doesn't have a name, at least not yet. But in just a few days, if all goes well, it could become one of the most important places on the moon's surface.
> That spot is a highland that rises between two craters dubbed Manzinus C and Simpelius N. On a grid of the moon's surface, it would fall at 70.9 degrees south latitude and 22.7 degrees east longitude. It's about 375 miles (600 kilometers) from the south pole.
"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
This is a classic flamewar topic that leads to nasty places and never generates anything interesting or new. Please don't go there on HN.
India announced a $1 billion line of credit (concessional loans) for the development of the resource-rich Far East region of Russia on Thursday. Explain this.
There are poor people in every country. Can you name a country where every single citizen has housing, enough to eat, and good health? According to you all countries must stop all spending on space programs, since the money could be used for housing, food or health.
The reality is that the amount of money spent on science is relatively miniscule, and no country can hope to advance without investing anything in science.
Out of 195 countries it will be only the 4th country to do this shit. So it must be doing some things right. Poverty is one of the problems it is still working on.
Scientific industries are the natural habitat of some of the most amazing and rare humans in existence. To destroy their means of living for the sake of supporting a self-destructively prolific form of human seems like a really poor decision.
So, the people who are taking themselves and their families out of poverty by getting engineering degrees in rocket science should refuse to work designing and building rockets?
I guess most people downvoting and commenting against you have never been to India.
I've travelled extensively, and I've spent a lot of time in India - nowhere else have I seen such an extreme juxtaposition of wealth with such abject poverty, squalor and misery.
On multiple occasions I've had (Western) colleagues travel with me to India (outsourcing...), who simply couldn't cope with what they saw; there were tears, a realisation of complete futility, and promises never to return.
I also have several Indian colleagues, some living temporarily in the west, some permanently, and some spread across India - every one I've asked about this is disgusted.
The money India spent on this pointless endeavour is beyond reason; I can only imagine it's somehow politically motivated, just as the "aid" money that several western nations send to India undoubtedly is.
Lets say I am a student in India, and I want to become an aerospace engineer and work with space. I get all the relevant education, and I want to increase my nation's tech capability in the sector I specialize in. There are a lot of people like me. As I understand it, you want us to squash our dreams until some other specialist destroy ALL poverty and ALL the other problems?
Why did the USA went to moon when they had not solved all their segregation and racism problems?
Also, ISRO is profitable. They make more money then they spend, IDK what the problem is?
> As I understand it, you want us to squash our dreams until some other specialist destroy ALL poverty and ALL the other problems?
No, that's not what I said at all.
It's all relative - the scale of poverty in India is simply staggering; so many people in India live below the poverty line in absolutely terrible conditions, lacking basic sanitation and access to education and health care.
India has far bigger problems than having a space program (which AFAICS isn't even breaking new ground - what is even the point apart from reinventing the wheel?!). If you're lucky enough to train as an autospace engineer in India, is it somehow your right that you would expect your government to spend a fortune on a space program, while millions live in abject squalor and misery?
The chairman of ISRO was a poor farmer's son. Now he is an intellectual. I can attest that lot of people who were poor in India have chosen the path of science because of such endeavors. 900Cr is actually peanuts against a lot of projects involving social upliftment projects that Indian Government invests in. And it is a long term investment.
I spent about 10 years of my life in a social home, where we did not even had 10 rs to buy medicine, and now almost everyone in my extended family in my generation is an privileged Engineer. A lot of inspiration came from our home grown and cheap space program.
Why does the USA pursue the space program when they still haven't solved cancer and there are a lot of creationists there, and a large amount of gun violence. It should not pursue the space program until it solves these things by your logic.
India will spend about 33 Trillion rupees total in various social upliftment, subsidy, transport and energy sector this year. The Chandrayan-2 is about decimal percentage of it.
> Why does the USA pursue the space program when they still haven't solved cancer and there are a lot of creationists there, and a large amount of gun violence. It should not pursue the space program until it solves these things by your logic.
No, that really doesn't follow from my argument; as I said, it's all relative, and the extent and scale of poverty in India goes far beyond that I've seen anywhere.
Anyway my initial reactive to this article was disgust, because of the terrible things I've seen first hand across India - a level of poverty, squalor and abuse that you truely cannot begin to comprehend unless you see it for yourself in India.
It's difficult to separate my emotions here from logical reasoning, but I've rethought my position on this; perhaps it's not such a bad thing after all. It is a relatively small sum of money, and could be a source of hope and aspiration for many.
>> The money India spent on this pointless endeavour is beyond reason
The Government of India spends orders of magnitude more money on safety nets for poor people each year. I'm not making claims about whether its enough, or about its effectiveness. It's also not true that the poor people have no hope. India's growing economy has lifted millions out of poverty each year for about 3 decades now, and it continues to grow at a faster pace than other emerging economies. To call a spend of $150m (which is peanuts compared to how much India spends directly on its people) on a scientific mission, which benefits the scientific community and is positively an inspiration to the nation's population, a waste of money seems misguided to me.
It doesn't seem misguided to me - what is this space program even meant to achieve? It seems to me that it's doing little more than reinventing the wheel.
140M may be small in the grand scheme of things, but that helps demonstrate the scale of the problem. And let's not forget the money India receives in foreign aid.
Now, the country can't of course give up everything until poverty is "solved"; it's far from that simple, and of course the nation must work for the rest of the populace. But a trip to the moon seems like the ultimate political vanity project.
I am an Indian, lived in Western Europe for 2.5 years and recently moved back, and you have no idea what you are talking about. You are wrongly assuming the state of a nation as big and diverse as India, by the perspective of handful of people who chose to leave the country.
I didn't say I based my words on only those opinions of my colleagues - as I mentioned, I've spent a lot of time in India, and travelled through a fair bit of it. I also volunteered at various charity projects in Mumbai, Pune and Delhi, so I've seen first hand how desperate things can get.
Yes, India is a huge and diverse country, yet in every area I went to there was a significant segment of the population living in truely horrifying conditions.
>Every day some 3,000 Indian children die from illnesses related to malnutrition, and yet countless heaps of rodent-infested wheat and rice are rotting in fields across the north of their own country.
It barely requires any money to solve the worst problems India has. Or much of the third world.
Was waiting for this, someone will show up and harp on the poverty! You need a budget for science, above all it inspires a whole generation of young people, it tells that kid in the gutter to dream big! It tells you to be hopeful when the chips are down! And we need this to counter the religious demagoguery in India.
I love India and its people, having spent five years there managing a dev team for our US operations. I’m American, parents were born in India.
And I gotta say, landing on the moon is by far the last thing India’s people need right now.
The amount of suffering, pollution, corruption, water shortages, is simply overwhelming. If you haven’t actually lived there it’s easy to say that India should still shoot for the stars while solving problems at home. From someone who lived there, let me tell you that they should focus on immediate problems first.
There are many attempts ongoing to solve immediate problems. Doesn't mean that we can't aim for space or push through with science which isn't immediately focused on solving issues on the ground. ISRO is only one of the government's many agencies. It's doing good work and getting scientific publicity, but so are many other programs.
If America can focus on space as well as the opioid crisis and mass shooting issues, why can't India do something similar?
Yeah immediate problems are being resolved by some people. But not all of our billion+ population needs to be so myopic.. there's a few that are rightly pushing the boundaries for the global scientific research.
The people that push for Indian space exploration are either (1) not living in India, or (2) they are living in India and doing well economically.
If you ask people living in the slums about this, they’ll give you a very different perspective than what you read on HN. And they vastly outnumber the people in India who are doing well.
I find it interesting that you try to answer for the millions who are "living in the slums".
There is enthusiasm for space in general (many are glued to their TVs or radios because the landing is going to start soon; one could say it's a point of national pride). I can say that because I live here, see the poverty in front of my eyes every day and talk to some of the people facing it. Sure, quite a few have opinions similar to yours, but they are across the economic spectrum, not just amongst the poor.
This is an argument which pops out frequently when there's a scientific success coming out of a developing country, and especially when India tries to do high-end science. The development in India has been insane, and many have moved out of poverty in a relatively short span of time, mainly because of multiple efforts by the people, the government and with the help of other countries, and this is going to continue happening. Meanwhile, space exploration will continue, whether some people like it or not.
>Out of 195 countries it will be only the 4th country to do this shit. So it must be doing some things right. Poverty is one of the problems it is still working on.
Advancing Science and technology is exactly the thing people of India need right now. This kind of mission inspires confidence in a nation's abilities and also inspires a generation of people to pursue science. Wont you agree that US moon landing inspired a generation of Americans?
Sigh. It is amazing how myopic we get seeing a different place. It reminds me of that NYT cartoon which was in poor taste. I can see some reasons why India would want to do this.
- They can use the technology developed during these missions for powering commercial space operations(It is an extremely lucrative market, moneywise). They have a commercial arm.[1]
- They have their own use of satellites as well like remote sensing, navigation(I think it is called NAVIC) etc.
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."
It's a unifying goal, which is good for any country. Good for India. God knows the US needs a unifying goal now. We seem to only be united by our disrespect of each other.
Perhaps the solution for those problems can be found while shooting for the stars. Don't you think new opportunities will knock India's doors if scientific projects like these are successful?
The people that push for Indian space exploration are either (1) not living in India, or (2) they are living in India and doing well economically.
If you ask people living in the slums about this, they’ll give you a very different perspective than what you read on HN. And they vastly outnumber the people in India who are doing well.
Well, have you really asked opinions of people living in slums? Forget India, how about asking people living under bridges in LA about their opinion on NASA.
Asks me to whitelist it in my adblocker. Then I am sceptical and think: "Hmmm, why do they need JS for a simple information page? Ok lets see, if I disable first party script blocking maybe ..." Then the site goes on nagging me about allowing their shitty scripts. I check again un uMatrix, and what do you know, OFC it loads effin Google Analytics. No thanks, tab closed.
Since you were born of Indian parents, it will be easy for you to get OCI/PIO. Why dont you go there and start helping with alleviating poverty, corruption, water shortages and suffering? Come on...you can do it...
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.