NASA finds lunar spacecraft that vanished 8 years ago | Hacker News Reader

NASA finds lunar spacecraft that vanished 8 years ago

edition.cnn.com

146 pointsgiis21 comments

From the cnn article: "Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft is small -- about half the size of a smart car -- making its detection even more noteworthy."

Thank you NASA!

It said one spacecraft was active, one was not, but it didn't explicitly say which was active? I was curious if they'll be able to reconnect with the Indian spacecraft.

I assume that the LRO is active, since they mentioned people that were still on the team, so they must have just been using it for target practice.

> "Finding LRO was relatively easy, as we were working with the mission's navigators and had precise orbit data where it was located."

> The Chandrayaan-1 was more of a challenge because the last contact with the spacecraft was in August 2009.

I assume that LRO was active, as you said, because they knew where it was located. Chandrayaan-1 lost contact, so was the inactive one.

Yes, LRO is still active. Also, you too can know where it is right now[1]!

1. http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/about/whereislro

Is that on the ground or is that an orbit map? It looks like that cliche 'bell curve flattened earth shadow weather' looking thing in space movies. Also by context seems like its orbit.

Also its nuts interfacing hardware with software like that, like a button or sensor attached to a web server, cool stuff.

It's an orbit map (showing nadir of the orbiter).

I see thanks for the clarification.

I guess I don't get why it would be an S shape even if it's a perfect-circle orbit or an ellipse flattened out (side view). Yeah I'll have to read up on that.

edit: not sure if this is related, I remember doing this thing when I was a kid, you'd spin a globe and trace a pencil straight down (a lonitude line) and it spiral out (the drawn line). To simulate Coriolis effect

edit: Oh I see depends on what it's aligned to, (equator) to create the sinusoidal look... reminds me in calc or engineering creating diagrams/charts (maybe beams and moment/force diagrams) ahhh... sucks when you don't use something and you forget. In calc you did something with max/mins and this determined the concave/convex of a curve on a graph. Ahhh rambling sorry.

There's also lots of distortion due to the equirectangular projection. When you are at +/- 90 degrees, 1 pixel is being stretched across the entire width. It would look more natural if it was mapped on a sphere. Or if the 2D image dropped off width by cosine of latitude.

Here's the NASA article without all the intrusive advertising on the CNN site:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/new-nasa-radar-technique-fi...

Also, lots more information.

Please change this thread to point to NASA instead.

Unfortunately it's now out past Neptune and it's broadcasting "liberate tutame ex inferis"

This is really cool. Sorry I don't have anything more substantive to add but space related news like this is uplifting on so many levels.

Did it actually"vanish"? I mean, if they just weren't able to detect it, then it was still there, just undetected.

"Vanish" suggests to me it was portaled to an alternate universe, engaged its cloaking device, put on its ring of invisibility or something.

Really? You actually thought the article was about how a lunar spacecraft ported to another dimension based on the title?

The title pedantry is getting to new levels of silly.

I agree. This fussing about titles has really gotten annoying. I understand that some titles can be improved but I'm tired of the endless discussions.

You're right: Going somewhere full of tech geeks and discussing the finer points of English should be expected to whoosh right over their heads and anger them.

Clearly the issue is that whooshes right over your and sundry down-voter's heads is within my point: the spacecraft failed and its operators could not find it. Stating that the craft vanished has the effect of moving the fault to something other than the operators.

If you don't think headlines matter, then the propagandists win.

don't bring it back

I am in awe.

We can track objects in space like these - yet we failed to track down MH 370.

Bit harder to send radar through water than it is space.

Objects in stable orbits are pretty predictable. We were able to accurately track the locations of the other planets with pencil and paper hundreds of year ago.

Actually lunar orbits are considerably less predictable than that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitation_of_the_Moon

I think that shows how big and empty that particular area of the Indian ocean is, far over the horizon from land-based radar sites.

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