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back to article Chinese Jade RABBIT SIGHTED ON MOON by NASA probe

An American probe in orbit above the Moon has beamed back exciting new images showing the first objects from China to be discovered on the lunar surface. Lander at the top, Rabbit at the bottom The objects in question are the small "Jade Rabbit" crawler robot and the Chang'e 3 lander which delivered it to our neighbouring …

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  1. Pen-y-gors

    It's a conspiracy I tell you...

    It was bad enough when NASA faked the moon landings, but it was only to be expected that the Chinese would follow up with dodgy film taken on a film set in Shanghai. But for NASA to join in by backing up their charade...shame on them all!

    Anyway, everyone knows that the moon is too small and far away for anything to reach it - and the Clangers have an excellent anti-invasion missile shield anyway.

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    1. Graham Dawson Silver badge
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      Re: It's a conspiracy I tell you...

      A bin-lid over a crater isn't a missile shield.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: It's a conspiracy I tell you...

        ...perhaps not, but backed up by a spring-loaded pivoting cricket bat mounted on the music boat it would improve their capability no end.

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    2. Mtech25
      Reply Icon
      Alien

      Re: It's a conspiracy I tell you...

      Don't you know the Clangers run both the Chinese space program and the NASA they also run starbucks as well who have just started a project know simply as Phase 2.

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      1. John G Imrie
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        Re The Clangers

        It will all unravel in the end you know.

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        1. Fink-Nottle
          Reply Icon

          Re: The Clangers

          > It will all unravel in the end you know.

          ♩ ♬ ♬ ♯♩ ♪. ♫ ♭ ♫ ♬ !!!

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      2. Alan Brown Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: It's a conspiracy I tell you...

        "they also run starbucks "

        That explains the barista who looks suspiciously like the Soup Dragon in the one near me.

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    3. Don Jefe
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      Re: It's a conspiracy I tell you...

      I suspect you're partially correct but the conspiracy goes much further than studio footage. In an unsanctioned bid to continue with their massively underfunded mission of exploration, NASA management agreed to provide the world with unbiased 'proof' of China's success in its moon mission in exchange for funds sufficient to maintain staffing levels through Q3 2014.

      China reportedly has a bit of an image problem you see. Having NASA validate their success is a huge coup for their government. Everybody believes NASA. NASA also has decades of experience faking lunar imagery so it was only natural China would want to take advantage of that. Besides, you can't embed a watermark unless you've got a licensed copy of Photoshop. Those are extremely rare anyway, only to be found in US government agencies with absurdly large technology budgets. There's not even a remote possibility there are any licensed copies in China.

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      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: It's a conspiracy I tell you...

        That's just what they wanted you to think.

        In fact China introduced a backdoor into your router so it inserts these fake stories and fake images directly into the http connection

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      2. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Coat

        Re: It's a conspiracy I tell you...

        I'm sure it all started with the Chinese pointing out that we were no longer using the Appollo program soundstage, and that their treasury bill purchases were paying for the upkeep anyway...

        Now if you will excuse me, I have a headache and I am going to lie down. It seems that the chip implanted in my head by the Freemasons is acting up. No worries, its probably just the NSA hacking it again...

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    4. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      @pen

      Well, conspiracy is a bit too much for me but I am a bit puzzled why a rover which is much smaller than the moonlander would give us a rather sharp picture (you can clearly see the square sized structure) whereas they never managed the same for the moon landing devices. Even though they should be a lot larger.

      I don't keep up with all the new photo's so it's very possible I missed something, but last pictures I saw only showed some very small, hard to see, dots with a bit of shadow.

      As said, conspiracy theories are a bit far fetched, but this did surprise me a bit.

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      1. Fink-Nottle
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        Re: @pen

        > they never managed the same for the moon landing devices.

        Really?

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        1. Anonymous Coward
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          Anonymous Coward

          @fink

          Yes, really.

          The shadow of the LM is going left. The shadow of the PSEP is going right.

          What gives?

          Even the shadow of the craters is going right.

          No conspiracies, for sure ;)

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          1. Graham Dawson Silver badge
            Reply Icon

            Re: @fink

            Seriously?

            Engage your critical thinking for a moment.

            First: would they release an image with such a fundamental mistake if they were faking it?

            second: the LEM had this great big firework strapped to the bottom; it blew away a lot of the regolith and revealed the darker material beneath as it touched down.

            Even if you're joking about this: shut up! I am sick to death with people coming up with all this conspiracy bullshit about the moon landings. it's as if you can't bring yourself to accept that we as a species are capable of achieving anything of note.

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            1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge
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              Re: @fink

              But to fake the moon landings and keep the conspiracy a secret for 40years is a much more impressive achievement than simply building a bigger V2 and shooting it at the moon.

              It's people like you who don't believe our government capable of such an audacious plan that bring the country down.

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            2. Eureka
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              Re: @fink

              I'm not a moon landing conspiracist, but it is interesting to note there are other objects in the left half of the photo that appear to have reverse shadows. They seem to appear in both before/after photos. One large one is almost straight left of the Jade Rabbit's location, about 5/16" to 3/8" from the left edge of the photo. Others are down in the lower left corner as well. I'm guessing they weren't all caused by blown-away regolith (unless it was a popular U.S. landing site), so I'm wondering if there might be another explanation for the reverse shadow issue.

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              1. AndyS
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                Re: @fink

                Are you serious? Those are boulders, so when the light source is to the left, the shadows are to the right. Just like the lander and rover. The other shadows are from craters, so the shadow falls on the side of the crater nearer the light source.

                Simple language: Sticky up thing has shadow away from light. Dippy down thing has shadow towards light.

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          2. Fink-Nottle
            Reply Icon

            Re: @fink

            It turns out that the PSEP's shadow is consistent with it's shape - the PSEP (foreground) is a box between two angled panels.

            Can't accuse NASA of failing to pay attention to detail ;)

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      2. Don Jefe
        Reply Icon
        Happy

        Re: @pen

        You're seeing two things that are working together and making the craft 'easy' to see:

        A) An out of context shape. There's nothing else square in the area. Previous NASA and Russian craft were a lot 'rounder', or at least not as square.

        B) An out of context color. There's nothing else even close to that color in the area. It's the same phenomenon that makes cigarette ashes appear black on a white shirt and white on a black shirt.

        Shape, color and movement are what our eyes and brains are highly tuned to look for. Obviously movement is important here, but those three things mean something 'different' is present and deserves more indepth analysis to determine if the 'different' thing is a threat, benign or perhaps tasty. Neat huh.

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    5. Allan George Dyer
      Reply Icon
      Coat

      Re: It's a conspiracy I tell you...

      ... and did you notice how the Chinese deliberately said they were going to a different part of the moon, because they weren't sure they could get access to NASA's sound stage? That proves it!

      The soup-proof spacesuit, please.

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  2. Paul_Murphy

    Well done China.

    And NASA of course.

    Another country breaking into space exploration, maybe I should transfer my childhood dreams to China now, especially if the US is going to be spending more money on bailing out banks and less on space.

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    1. Roger Varley
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      Re: Well done China.

      I can't tell the difference between one little white dot or the other little white dots, other than two of them have arrows pointing at them. Unless someone can come up with a convincing theory as to how they got there on the lunar surface, I too call hoax.

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      1. AndyS
        Reply Icon

        Re: Well done China.

        You mean other than the fact that they weren't there in the 'before' shot?

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  3. John H Woods Silver badge
    Joke

    Wouldn't it be better if solar panels were ...

    ... less shiny?

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    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Wouldn't it be better if solar panels were ...

      I think they bought the cheap chinese ones from dealextreme

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wouldn't it be better if solar panels were ...

      No, because the energy they would have to absorb then would make them get very hot. You want the photons that excite the voltaic bit of the cells, not the IR photons that make things hot.

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      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Wouldn't it be better if solar panels were ...

        But you would like them to absorb the abundant sunlight in the very bands that the orbiter's imager uses.

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    3. Paul Crawford Silver badge
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      Re: Wouldn't it be better if solar panels were ...

      It is also relative. You have to remember the moon is surprisingly dark (albedo around 0.12, similar to worn asphalt according to Wikipedia).

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    2001+

    Where's the plantlike creature that's about to come out of the frozen ocean and pull the lander over? I am so very disappointed. I'm beginning to suspect that a lot of what Arthur C Clarke wrote was little more than fiction.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 2001+

      Wrong moon old chap, that was Europa wasn't it?

      Oh, and there was that chap in the space suit using up his last remaining air and battery power to broadcast an explanation. Maybe that one didn't make it through the Great Firewall...

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: 2001+

        "Wrong moon old chap, that was Europa wasn't it?"

        That was supposed to have been three years ago, and they've just got to our Moon.

        Science fiction authors in general have tended to underestimate how long everything takes. It needs Sir T. Pratchett to invent a world which goes from a medieval economy to the Victorian era in a single lifetime, and that's called fantasy. But an awful lot of "hard" science fiction was in reality pure fantasy in its compression of timescale.

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    2. Ugotta B. Kiddingme
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      Re: 2001+

      It's still on Europa, right where Clarke said it would be.

      1 0
  5. Captain Scarlet
    Paris Hilton

    Dilbert

    Why does this seem like something that Dilberts company did in the animated series?

    0 0
    1. Anonymous Noel Coward
      Reply Icon
      Alien

      Re: Dilbert

      Your job is to create digital pictures of uncharted star systems and deliver them to NASA every... Tuesday.

      0 0
  6. Herby

    Conspiracy??

    I have doubts.

    Remember: The validity of a conspiracy goes down as the number of people needed to make it happen goes up. Of course, the counter to this is The Matrix, and the 6th replicant.

    As for the A-B picture, there is a nice shadow!

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  7. Charles Manning

    Typical Americans

    Can't go amywhere without them spying on you.

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  8. tempemeaty

    China now the number one super power?

    It's good to know NASA can confirm that China is prepairing to do NASA's work for them now since NASA can't land humans anywhere anymore. Hopefully soon we will see Chinese landing on the moon then Mars....

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  9. Martin Budden Silver badge

    Phew, that was close!

    A couple of metres over to the right and it would have fallen in that hole!

    0 0
  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    There are actually buildings on the moon.

    Antient alien structures. But NASA keeps those under wraps for some bizarre reason.

    Google it.

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  11. Potemkine Silver badge

    Moon under surveillance

    Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

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  12. e8hffff

    Where are the signs of ground interferance from the llanding and mobiles?

    0 0
    1. Jonathan Richards 1
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Too small

      > Where are the signs of ground interference from the landing and mobiles?

      If you read the article, you'll see that the pixel resolution here is 1.5 METRES. Rabbit tracks are smaller than that, so of course you can't see them. This isn't like CSI, where you can take a lousy web-cam image of a reflection in somebody's sunglasses and just go on zooming in to get an image of a latent fingerprint.

      5 0
    2. Martin Budden Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Is a llanding what happens when a llama touches down?

      0 0
  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    340.4884°E

    What kind of selenographic coordinate is this?

    0 0
  14. Wombling_Free
    Black Helicopters

    Wake up Sheeple!

    When will people realise that it is the MOON ITSELF that is the fake? It is an advertising stunt by McAppleCocaDisneySoftMonsantoShell.

    Want proof? Try finding a photo of the Moon from before 1827 - YOU CAN'T! The conspiracy was started then by the International Bavarian Magi (IBM -see? SEE?) and has been perpetrated by their descendant cabals since then.

    WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

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  15. CountZer0
    Coffee/keyboard

    Title is optional, rabbit poo is not

    Is it me or was there some (jade) rabbit poo a few pixels below the lander? GIF reveals all!

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