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Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

arstechnica.com

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Re: Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

#161

Post by Alex-Programs »

somenameforme wrote: post #44
j_bum wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reads like a “comment” version of Destin’s speech to a NASA group a few years ago [0]. The loss of institutional knowledge and fundamentals philosophical differences seem like they’ll need to be overcome. [0] https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU?si=EUxpp6C9vRAYD3kA

What an absolutely phenomenal speech and video. Just a sort of +1 highly recommended thing. That video was crazy insightful .

Was it? I read it as a pretty hyped up version of "old space guy says to old space people that they're not old spacing enough, presents it as rebellion". In particular (and, to be clear, it's been a while) he kept going "why not do it like apollo" when the entire point is that it isn't Apollo anymore.

Though, again, it's been a while since I watched it.

Re: Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

#163

Post by hilbert42 »

This is horribly disappointing but I'm surprised the altimeter failed as I'd have thought this would have been one of the more reliable aspects of the mission.

How does its altimeter work, exactly what tech does it use? It's worth remembering that radar-type altimeters have been around for a long time and are well developed. For example, Little Boy that was dropped on Hiroshima 80 years ago used radar altimeters in a redundancy arrangement (four devices) and that worked on first attempt.

So what went wrong? Second question, was redundancy employed in the altimeter's design? Third, if the altimeter employed redundancy then why weren't its multiple sections of different designs to allow for the possibility that the reflected signal may be weak and noisy?

(The strength of a returned wave from a radar transmission depends on various factors including its wavelength and the properties of the surface it's being reflected from. If there's any doubt the returned signal's S/N would be such that noise could be a problem it'd make sense for a redundant system to employ multiple wavelengths whose frequencies are far enough apart to take advantage of the fact that the moon's surface would reflect different wavelengths in different ways and at different signal strengths.)

Re: Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

#164

Post by virgildotcodes »

To be clear, I am in no way a conspiracy theorist, at all. Seriously, not just a bs disclaimer. That said, all of the recent photos of the moon that have come out in the last month or so look, to my eye, super CGI. Just uh, overly smooth and lacking in detail?

Is there a reason for this or am I just tripping?

Re: Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

#165

Post by marcusverus »

virgildotcodes wrote: post #164

To be clear, I am in no way a conspiracy theorist, at all. Seriously, not just a bs disclaimer. That said, all of the recent photos of the moon that have come out in the last month or so look, to my eye, super CGI. Just uh, overly smooth and lacking in detail? Is there a reason for this or am I just tripping?

There is no atmosphere, ergo no light diffusion. Shadows will be crisper, lit spots will be brighter, dark spots darker. It makes sense that such differences could make an image feel "off".

Re: Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

#166

Post by Dylan16807 »

ivanjermakov wrote: post #151

Why people make temperature in space a big deal? It's mostly vacuum and has no heat capacity. Sun radiation is the real threat, but the concept of temperature can't even be applied to vacuum.

It's small enough to lose plenty of heat without conduction.

Re: Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

#167

Post by alex_young »

virgildotcodes wrote: post #164

To be clear, I am in no way a conspiracy theorist, at all. Seriously, not just a bs disclaimer. That said, all of the recent photos of the moon that have come out in the last month or so look, to my eye, super CGI. Just uh, overly smooth and lacking in detail? Is there a reason for this or am I just tripping?

I’m not sure I get it. Can’t you just look at it yourself? It seems pretty real to me.

Re: Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

#168

Post by bbor »

virgildotcodes wrote: post #164

To be clear, I am in no way a conspiracy theorist, at all. Seriously, not just a bs disclaimer. That said, all of the recent photos of the moon that have come out in the last month or so look, to my eye, super CGI. Just uh, overly smooth and lacking in detail? Is there a reason for this or am I just tripping?

What other pictures are you thinking of? I don’t recall any rovers since china’s (?) last year.

These pictures in particular are taken from a very high altitude, which may explain why they look unnatural?

Re: Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

#169

Post by driggs »

elzbardico wrote: post #160
driggs wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you making the argument that anyone with enough money should be able to do whatever they want on the moon? Giant neon McDonalds billboards visible from everywhere on Earth? Mining with zero restriction on impacts to the surface of the Moon or its atmosphere? Apparently the HN crowd doesn't stand anyone criticizing a "startup", but I'm asking a legitimate question. So far most of the junk we've launched onto the M…

Are you making the argument that for some reason we should heavily discourage lunar exploration for the sake of keeping the moon pristine? Why is this more important than expanding our ability as a species to explore space?

Regulation doesn't mean "heavily discourage".

Keeping the Moon, or Mars, or Venus as pristine as possible is the only way we can study those environments as they exist in their natural condition. Not to mention that we can't detect the presence of life on those worlds if we've contaminated them with life from our own.

If you think this idea is incompatible with exploration, you can take it up with NASA's Office of Planetary Protection:

https://sma.nasa.gov/sma-disciplines/planetary-protection

Re: Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

#170

Post by numpad0 »

martin_drapeau wrote: post #41
1970-01-01 wrote: post #7

Still unclear what happened. Did they not anticipate a big moon hole or did navigation fail when the rangefinder failed?

Scott Manley has a great video explaining what he thinks happened. https://youtu.be/ISZTTEtHcTg?si=0LZFyiCysBiFZrMz

tldw: speculation: landed with too much lateral velocity and one of legs broke
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