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Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

The first image on that page, the one showing the spacecraft nose-down, is said to be an actual photograph, not a rendering. Is that true? On the one hand, the image has a few flaws that I would not expect on a rendering, but on the other hand, how in the world could such a photograph have been taken? Were there two landers?

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It released Lunar Excursion Vehicle 2 (LEV-2) or SORA-Q a tiny (250g) rover which then took the picture. LEV-1 was also successfully deployed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Lander_for_Investigating...

https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2024/01/25/Japan-SLIM-landi...

It successfully released a rover while being rotated 90 degrees??? Holy shit, that is some seriously robust engineering.

LEV-1 and LEV-2 rovers are released 1.8m(6ft) above ground. Lunar gravity is 1/6th of Earth so landers can take it.

After ejected they both circle around and look for the mothership autonomously, and in this instance the wheeled LEV-2 rover found what it believes to be the ship and the hopper LEV-1 rover relayed the thumbnail back to Earth via direct downlink.

Lunar gravity. Possibly landing in sand/dust. It wouldn't be much of an impact, like dropping you cellphone a foot onto a thick carpet. Most any small metal object would be fine.

Apparently there is an HN rule stating that we should never ask a commenter whether or not they have read the article posted. I respect that rule, it's there for a reason to prevent snark and all sorts of flamebait that can turn a forum toxic. However, for the sake of encouraging thoughtful and constructive discussion I am going to politely point out that the answer to that question was to be found in both the original article posted and the BBC story subsequently linked in the parent comment.

It does make me start to think that there is perhaps a large contingent of people who go around their daily lives just skimming and reacting to headlines. How does that affect their interpretation of the world around them, I wonder? How does it affect their voting?

Correct. The rendering is the second, more perfect, image.

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