May 27th, 2017: China Moon

Big news. China made a soft landing on the Moon and dispatched a robot to explore… in 2013.

While the mission took place in 2013, China’s National Space Administration released thousands of the high definition images during 2015. The images however, weren’t displayed by western media due to the fact that China is used to release images in a period of one to one and a half years after received them.

Mom sending Jr out to play...

For the first time ever, you can take a peek at the lunar surface like never before thanks to the sophisticated cameras located onboard the Chang’e 3, one of China’s most advanced lunar landers. The Lunar Mission touched down on the region known as Mare Imbrium –where researchers believe in the distant past, actual water could have existed.

Not long ago, Planetary Society’s Emily Lakdawalla spent weeks searching through the photo trove –which has over 45 gigabytes of data—and presenting it all in a easily downloadable manner for the entire world to see. “When it comes to data sharing from China, the situation is pretty good,” says Lakdawalla, who notes that the images’ formats mirror those used by NASA and the European Space Agency. “It would probably be much easier if I could read the language.”

Jr out exploring the neighborhood...

The images are beyond fascinating and have helped scientists around the world, to understand the complex and mysterious geology of the lunar surface, even revealing a completely new moon rock, undiscovered by previous mission of the Soviet Union and United States.

In 2017, China plans to send another lander to the moon which will even return numerous lunar samples back to Earth, exploring the moon in the process and helping researchers back on Earth understand the complex geology and origin of the moon, which has remained one of the most mysterious celestial objects in our solar system.

Jr finds out the Moon rocks...

While the CNSA website is difficult to navigate - not to mention entirely in Chinese - the US Planetary Society has reposted the images from both Yutu and Chang'e 3 in accessible formats.

The Chinese don't plan on stopping here, they're planning on sending people too, which is great news.
Now when we send people to Mars they can stop for takeout. :o

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It's kinda painful to see the US being passed by other countries. I remember when we had a manned spaceflight program. That was cool.

Passed? They're doing what we did 50 years ago with less computing power than a smartphone.
They're getting higher resolution pictures because of higher technology now but that's just more proof that it's not necessary to send people to get the information. The manned program was exciting but so was flying in it's time. Even the later manned launches didn't draw that much attention from the general public.
Now Trump will build a wall more expensive than China's wall. ;)

I wonder what would cause that rock to become that shape. (Normally, you'd say "... cause that rock to become weathered", but, you know: MOON). :alien2:

Perhaps it was formed when the Moon had water then buried in dust only to be unearthed(unmooned) later?
Have to turn it over and see if it says Made in China on the bottom. :lol:

That rock is actually a piece of Beijing smog.

glatt;989581 wrote:

It's kinda painful to see the US being passed by other countries.

Why is that, in this case a problem?

As an American, I'm proud of America's accomplishments in science and technology. We are being passed by other countries not because they are so great but because we have stopped trying so hard.

The pace of innovation used to be a lot faster. That was better for all of us on Earth.

A quick google tells me the NASA budget is around 20B$ and the Military budget is in the order of 600B$.
If one wanted to make America the envy of the world, seems to me you could double NASA's budget and sneak out of the military budget without anyone going short. but then I'm just a simple scientist/engineer.

Well, the envy of the world in 10 years, anyway. It's not like there are space probes just sitting on the shelf at Wal-Mart waiting for NASA to pony up the cash. Budget now means impressive stuff in somebody else's election cycle, that's not useful...

See, here you go again, trying to mix dollars and sense.