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Moon landing 2013 (Chang'e 3)

czokletmuss

By czokletmuss
in Science & Spaceflight

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Astraph

Astraph

Posted
Posted

A bit of offtop, but maybe I can find some consolation here - is the whole Chang'e-3 landing completelly ignored in your country's media as well? In Polad our biggest websites (and I don't think of headlines, even the "Science & Technology sections") seem to completely overlook this event. Which is strange, taking into account it might (IMHO) become the beginning of a new space race - with Asian countries having open competition, and the "old" space powers (remember Constellation, US?) suddenly realising they no longer have the space monopoly...

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Kryten

Kryten

Posted
Posted (edited)
A bit of offtop, but maybe I can find some consolation here - is the whole Chang'e-3 landing completelly ignored in your country's media as well?

It's on the front page of the BBC, haven't really checked out other british news outlets. Given what they're typically like, they're probably focusing more on which z-list celebrity supposedly slept with which and pumpng out xenophobic editorals about romanians.

EDIT: Yup, they are.

Edited by Kryten
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Astraph

Astraph

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When landed, the media said the mission was 90% succeed. When photos of both of them were taken, the media said the mission was fully succeed. Now I wonder what's next?

Well, ladning itself was already an achievement, so I guess they wanted to play it safe and say "90%" in case something unexpected happened - like the Venera probe that got its soil probe blocked by camera lens cover ;)

It's on the front page of the BBC, haven't really checked out other british news outlets. Given what they're typically like, they're probably focusing more on which z-list celebrity supposedly slept with which and pumpng out xenophobic editorals about romanians.

Actually I got almost all my updates on the topic from BBC - and believe me, their site is brimming with news, compared to Polish ones :/

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tetryds

tetryds

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A bit of offtop, but maybe I can find some consolation here - is the whole Chang'e-3 landing completelly ignored in your country's media as well? In Polad our biggest websites (and I don't think of headlines, even the "Science & Technology sections") seem to completely overlook this event. Which is strange, taking into account it might (IMHO) become the beginning of a new space race - with Asian countries having open competition, and the "old" space powers (remember Constellation, US?) suddenly realising they no longer have the space monopoly...

Not even a hint about it.

My country's media don't even know someone ever step on the Moon.

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astropapi1

astropapi1

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Nein. Well yes, but it was a 15 second mention. Just like " Hey, the chinese landed a probe on the moon!".

I was talking with my father about it. He says it happens because the general public doesn't care about it, but all the people I told about Chang'e 3 were enthusiastic and wanted me to give them more information on the subject. One of my friends even wanted me to teach him the basics of orbital mechanics so he could understand the different parts of the trip.

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lajoswinkler

lajoswinkler

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A bit of offtop, but maybe I can find some consolation here - is the whole Chang'e-3 landing completelly ignored in your country's media as well? In Polad our biggest websites (and I don't think of headlines, even the "Science & Technology sections") seem to completely overlook this event. Which is strange, taking into account it might (IMHO) become the beginning of a new space race - with Asian countries having open competition, and the "old" space powers (remember Constellation, US?) suddenly realising they no longer have the space monopoly...

TV prime time: one sentence about Chang'e 3, few sentences about Iran's monkey. That's it. Pathetic.

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PTNLemay

PTNLemay

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Sorry if this had already been brought up, but... why does everything we're getting back from their probes and rovers look so god-awful in picture quality and resolution? Is it a bandwidth issue with getting data downloaded from the moon? And if it was bandwidth, couldn't they have solved that with a buffer on the probe where it could be held until they had spare time to download the landing.

I mean the Apollo landings looked like they had better video and pictures, and they were using comparatively ancient technology. Even the chinese can get their hands on decent HD cameras, can't they? This landing is as much for national pride as it is for any scientific value, so you'd think they would want to make it look as good as possible for the public.

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maccollo

maccollo

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Posted (edited)

Because the quality of the picture is not very important when you just want to make sure everything is going smoothly.

The first pictures we got back from curiosity looked like this and it took several days before we got anything that looked good.

http://www.astrobio.net/images/galleryimages_images/Gallery_Image_9463.jpg

Now we have this

http://www.360cities.net/image/mars-panorama-curiosity-solar-day-177#13.70,23.50,85.0

Edited by maccollo
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check

check

Posted
Posted
Sorry if this had already been brought up, but... why does everything we're getting back from their probes and rovers look so god-awful in picture quality and resolution? Is it a bandwidth issue with getting data downloaded from the moon? And if it was bandwidth, couldn't they have solved that with a buffer on the probe where it could be held until they had spare time to download the landing.

I mean the Apollo landings looked like they had better video and pictures, and they were using comparatively ancient technology. Even the chinese can get their hands on decent HD cameras, can't they? This landing is as much for national pride as it is for any scientific value, so you'd think they would want to make it look as good as possible for the public.

I'm going to assume that the images that are being released through the Chinese news outlets aren't the actual, raw images/videos, but rather rescaled and compressed JPEGs. It doesn't seem like the Chinese have set up a website to release raw images as they get them like the Americans do for Curiosity or the MERs. I could be wrong though.

With regards to why the Apollo 'video' and images look so good, it's because the video was recorded on 16mm film and the still images were also recorded on film. The resolution of film is REALLY good. The TV video from Apollo, on the other hand doesn't look nearly as good to the 16mm video.

Comparison:

vs
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check

Posted
Posted
How did it take that picture?

Aliens. It was the aliens.

It's a composite of several dozen images taken by a camera on the rover's robotic arm and cleverly stitched together and projected in a way that makes it look like a selfie.

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Nibb31

Nibb31

Posted
Posted
Sorry if this had already been brought up, but... why does everything we're getting back from their probes and rovers look so god-awful in picture quality and resolution? Is it a bandwidth issue with getting data downloaded from the moon? And if it was bandwidth, couldn't they have solved that with a buffer on the probe where it could be held until they had spare time to download the landing.

There are several reasons. The main reason is that you don't know how long the lander and rover are going to stay alive. The first thing you want to do when you arrive isn't to start taking hi-res 3D pictures that take hours or days to upload, just to find out that your rover died in the middle of the transmission and you lost everything. You don't want to switch on all your instruments at once in case you overload something.

The first pictures taken are usually low-res quick snapshots to make sure that the lander is on the ground, that it isn't upside down or sitting on a slope. You don't need hi-res for this, but you need that info fast so that you can take corrective action if necessary, or figure out why the rover failed if it does stop transmitting. You enable the instruments and equipment in a sequence and you check power levels and to minimize any issues.

They you do the other system checks, which were the main purpose of the "selfie pics" of the rover and lander: to make sure that everything is properly deployed, that nothing is broken off or obstructed. Again, you don't need hi-res for this. And then, as you gain confidence, you start switching on the more power hungry hi res cameras and periodically increase the data bandwidth to optimize transmissions.

The hi-res 3D pics will come, but they will take a while to upload. This is standard procedure for pretty much all space missions. And don't worry, the rover and lander do have memory buffers, so even if it takes weeks to transmit the early data, it is still stored locally until then.

Oh and don't forget that the Apollo pictures were analogic. The video pictures that were transmitted back live were pretty bad really. The good still pictures came from the Hasselblad medium format cameras for which the film cartridges were brought back and processed on Earth. In terms of resolution, analog is always better than hi-res digital. In terms of bandwidth though, it took 3 days to bring them back and several weeks to process them ;)

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Tommygun

Tommygun

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Posted

Oh and don't forget that the Apollo pictures were analogic. The video pictures that were transmitted back live were pretty bad really. The good still pictures came from the Hasselblad medium format cameras for which the film cartridges were brought back and processed on Earth. In terms of resolution, analog is always better than hi-res digital. In terms of bandwidth though, it took 3 days to bring them back and several weeks to process them ;)

I just happen to see an interview the other day with someone at NASA who is restoring old Apollo footage.

He mentioned why the old TV footage was so bad. Apparently the footage seen at NASA control was quite good, but the video was not compatible with the commercial TV technology at the time.

So they literally put a commercial TV camera in front of one of their custom made TV sets and filmed the TV screen.

He went on to say the video footage was stored, I think on metal tape, but afterwards engineers recorded later Moon landings over a lot of it to save space.

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