Not asking rhetorically but why is this a big deal? Is it because it's going to the south pole? What are some other benefits to be gained from this?
Aliens. They are out there somewhere.
Nah. Escaped nazis.
Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]
251–260 of 542 posts
Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]
#252Amazing, congratulations to all involved. Great day for the nation.
Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
This applies to general software development but is especially true in this case While we think "this cannot ever happen" in a lot of cases it can, in ways you did not consider. Both for good and bad
The recent japanese lander had something like this happen a while back. The altitude radar noticed a sudden 2km drop in ground-level, and the system assumed it was broken and stopped using that data. Turns out it just flew over a cliff edge that actually does that. Completely by accident.
They picked a new landing site late in the program and didn't get the topography near that site, or run enough combinations through the software in test.
Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why such a long political speech and no views from onboard camera?
Unfortunately all the national space agencies seem to suffer from this. Both NASA and ESA also seem to think that people are tuning in to watch the smarmy politician talk rather than the robot making its way to space/landing on another body. Had the same issue with JWST for example.
To his credit, Narendra Modi has increased ISRO's budget a lot. Many years they have received more than promised! So he kind of deserves to rake in the limelight.
Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can imagine that this is a HN-bubble thing. Most people would probably get bored from just seeing some live footage.
SpaceX livestream much more mundane things with tens of thousands of viewers
10s of thousands. That has to be some kind of record.
Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately all the national space agencies seem to suffer from this. Both NASA and ESA also seem to think that people are tuning in to watch the smarmy politician talk rather than the robot making its way to space/landing on another body. Had the same issue with JWST for example.
On the other hand, political speeches on such occasions go down as most remembered historically. The infamous quote "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." was obviously said by some politician! (or at least with non-technical motives)
They want to go down in the history books the way JFK's "we choose to go to the Moon" did without experiencing the "mind-blowing" event afterwards that made the speech historical.
Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
SpaceX livestream much more mundane things with tens of thousands of viewers
10s of thousands. That has to be some kind of record.
The first launch of SpaceX's Crew Dragon with astronauts on-board holds the record for the most concurrent internet viewers on a stream tracked by NASA at 10 million.
Of course if you drop the internet requirement, Apollo 11 still is by far the most live viewed at 600 million viewers.
Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
This applies to general software development but is especially true in this case While we think "this cannot ever happen" in a lot of cases it can, in ways you did not consider. Both for good and bad
I really ought to dig up a reference for this, but there are strong echoes from the past here. Margaret Hamilton (who coined the term 'software engineering' and can be seen standing next to a tall pile of green bar printouts of the Apollo software) brought her daughter to work one weekend during the Apollo program and she (daughter) fiddled with the buttons and caused an error condition. Hamilton, based on this, argu…
If you find a reference (or anyone does), please share. This is too good a story not to be told widely.
Edit: here, at least, is a mention of the thing with her daughter in a Google Blog article: https://blog.google/products/maps/margaret-hamilton-apollo-1...
Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a big deal because India has never landed on the moon before; only three nations have.
> With this mission, India became the first to impact the Lunar south pole and the 7th nation to reach the lunar surface. Wiki article for Chandrayaan-1 from 2008.
India became the 4th to land successfully with Chandrayaan-3 just now. Others have crashed or deliberately impacted.
Re: Chandrayaan-3 Soft-landing [video]
#260Narendra Modi has landed on the Moon!
His face was bigger than the landing feed!