Jade Goody would be a more appropriate name now.
China confirms Jade Rabbit lunar rover has conked out
The Yutu rover delivered in China's first moon-probe mission has popped its clogs and will become a permanent fixture of the lunar landscape. "China's first lunar rover, Yutu, could not be restored to full function on Monday as expected, and netizens mourned it on Weibo, China's Twitter-like service," China News Service …
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Wednesday 12th February 2014 21:07 GMT Rodrigo Valenzuela
The Chinese are learning. And if we look back, they learn VERY fast.
This mission may not have been succesful, but there will be others, and others... They are nothing if not persistent.
On the other hand, I have never enjoy this kind of human effort failing.
I would really like to see other nation/states focusing their efforts on this kind of technology and everything it implies.
R
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Thursday 13th February 2014 09:25 GMT monkeyfish
NASA (and others) have successfully sent rovers, China is coping their work.
Well they would have been pretty bloody stupid not to have learned as much as possible from previous missions. Or would you prefer it if the occasional bridge was made of cheese because the builders didn't copy any previously used designs?
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Thursday 13th February 2014 13:35 GMT BristolBachelor
"NASA (and others) have successfully sent rovers, China is coping their work."
I have it on good authority that the NASA programs were largely developed on paper - invented by the Chinese, so obvious copying there. Also there are some rumours that the rockets were actually based on German technology - again more copying.Sorry; I've got lost somewhere. What exactly was your point? (Where's the twat icon?)
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Thursday 13th February 2014 15:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Yes - all technology is based on existing work. -1 point for making the most obvious observation I have heard in a while.
It would be a significant accomplishment if the Rover broke some new technology hurdle instead of doing what has been done by other before. (and more successfully it appears).
To place it in simple terms for the simple minded - if I went and build a copy of the Wright Flyer and it flew do you think I made a signification technology accomplishment?
So far all I can see if the Chinese are building the skills necessary - I have yet to hear of any major (or even minor) technical hurdle that has not already been solved by others.
Being first get in you the history books, being second (or 3rd?) gets you in a trivial game - at best.
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Thursday 13th February 2014 17:37 GMT cray74
This mission was very successful on a lot of points: launch, navigation to the moon, motor restarts in space, soft landing, deploying the rover, getting the instruments working, communication with home, etc. Those are the hard parts of getting to the moon (or Mars, and elsewhere) that have historically fed a lot of US and Rooskie space probes to the Great Galactic Ghoul.
If you look at a timeline of Russian moon landings, it was like they were blindly spraying a probe machine gun into the sky until they hit the moon. Blew up on the launch pad. Escape stage failed, stuck in orbit. Bad navigation sends probe into deep space. Escape stage failed, stuck in orbit (again). Motors fail to fire for landing. Smacked into a lunar mountain. The US had its own litany of failures getting to the moon, or even getting rockets off the launch pad.
Venusian and Martian exploration is littered with tales of failure, from the difficulty the Soviets faced just getting camera covers off (Venus landers) to the US's trouble with English-metric conversions (leading to the Mars Climate Orbiter's unplanned lithobraking maneuver). We're still at about a 50% success rate with Mars missions.
And China's first lunar landing mission got off the launch pad, navigated to the moon, soft landed, and started working. Yeah, it failed before it was supposed to, but Jade Rabbit also bypassed all the trouble points that repeatedly wrecked so many other space probes. That's plenty of success, and one huge learning experience.
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Wednesday 12th February 2014 21:38 GMT Mark 85
Rather a pity.
I hoped it would work. Maybe have the Chinese doing things on the moon would spur other countries to give it a shot. Perhaps one of these days, we (the US) will be back on the moon. Hopefully in peace and not in some sort of urination contest like the Cold War was. Somehow, I don't think that will happen.
As far as Chinese junk... seems history is repeating itself. Japanese, Taiwanese, Korean goods were all once considered "junk". Once China gets out of the "labor for others" mindset and start their own manufacturing and design for themselves, they'll move up that quality ladder.
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Wednesday 12th February 2014 21:54 GMT Radbruch1929
Re: Rather a pity.
While I share your sentiment, I hope that they made all the mistakes possible in this mission. Not because I am anti-Chinese but because then they are not going to make them when they are going to send a human taikonaut. And getting more experienced certainly is no reason to be "red faced".
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Thursday 13th February 2014 04:20 GMT MachDiamond
Re: Return trip
If you look through a list of missions sent to Mars, it's only in recent years that the success rate has gone up. Before the MER rovers, about half of the missions to Mars failed.
The temperature cycling on Luna is wicked and makes for difficult problems. I'd like to see them send up a mission to retrieve the rover and bring it back for an autopsy. There's nothing like being able to examine the corpse to really nail down the cause of death.
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Wednesday 12th February 2014 23:14 GMT MondoMan
IT 0, LP 1 (but don't worry, it's not about climate change)
IT:
"Mars probe Curiosity dumped solar panels altogether in favor of a nuclear heart. That rover uses a basic nuclear power system to provide energy for getting around, but also to keep the rover warmish during nighttime periods. The reactor should outlast the rest of the rover's parts by years."
LP (in linked article):
"Curiosity will generate both heat and power from its Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator unit, build by the nuclear-space boffins of the Idaho National Lab. A radioisotope generator isn't a reactor - it doesn't use a chain reaction to accelerate fission in its plutonium. "
So technically, no "nuclear power", no "reactor", just natural radioactive decay...
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Thursday 13th February 2014 05:34 GMT TimeMaster T
Re: IT 0, LP 1 (but don't worry, it's not about climate change)
"So technically, no "nuclear power", no "reactor", just natural radioactive decay..."
Technically it is still "nuclear power" as it uses atoms falling apart, the "radioactive decay" you mention, to produce energy.
You are however dead on that is is NOT a nuclear reactor, just a bunch of thermocouples arranged around a hot chunk of Pu-238.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator
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Thursday 13th February 2014 04:59 GMT Qu Dawei
Mistakes are necessary for learning
If you are not prepared to make mistakes, you cannot easily learn. This has been known for many years, even though it is sometimes dressed up with some Russian person's saying. The Chinese want to learn, and I am sure they will learn a lot from the mistake. However, they already achieved a lot, and I hope they go on to do much much more in this direction.
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Thursday 13th February 2014 08:42 GMT Michael H.F. Wilkinson
I have said it before, I will say it again
If you have successfully placed a rover on the moon and you have made it last longer than Jade Rabbit, then you have a right to knock the Chinese effort.
They launched and landed successfully, they gathered data and images, had the thing working for quite a while, and now it has broken. Not bad at all in my book.
I will be happy to raise a glass of Tsingtao beer in the engineers' honour this evening (although I might have to resort to another brand). I have several pieces of excellent Chinese optical kit, and know they can built excellent stuff when they "build up to a spec, rather than down to a price" as a friend of mine likes to say.
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Thursday 13th February 2014 09:02 GMT Lars
Re: I have said it before, I will say it again
Yes, and perhaps it's better to produce something than nothing and perhaps it would be clever to be a bit less nationalistic for all of us. And that goes very much for China too. As for copying we have copied stuff from China too and all American cars and engines are mere copies too if that "copying" is of such importance for somebody.
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Thursday 13th February 2014 09:53 GMT I like noodles
Re: I have said it before, I will say it again
"perhaps it would be clever to be a bit less nationalistic for all of us"
Good to read some sense in all of these lunar/martian comments.
As far as I'm concerned when 'nauts get into space they aren't American, Russian, Chinese, or any other nationality. They're simply human.
The same applies to robotic kit. In the grand galactical scheme of things, we're all one. And for those that can't see that? - maybe they should have another look at that pale blue dot.
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Thursday 13th February 2014 09:21 GMT Norman Hartnell
Re: It's baaaaack!
Emily Lakdawalla has some info here: planetary.org
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Thursday 13th February 2014 12:51 GMT mhenriday
The drama doesn't seem to be over quite yet ...
as signals seem to have been received which indicate that the Rabbit has awakened. Our moon may be rather closer than the stars, but Seneca's dictum still holds : non est ad astra mollis e terris via. Kudos to all those working on the programme !...
Henri