Japan launches moon lander and X-ray observatory Japan sent a new X-ray space telescope into low Earth orbit and a first, small lunar lander on its way to the moon with a single launch late Wednesday.
  • zhunk@beehaw.orgOP
    13·
    1 year ago

    That’s a heck of a rideshare!

    I’m so here for this moon cavalcade, and that’s the less interesting mission of the two. Best of luck to JAXA.

  • odium@programming.dev
    7·
    1 year ago

    What’s up with all the moon landings lately? Russia and India were just in the news last week about their attempts at Moon landings.

    • zhunk@beehaw.orgOP
      5·
      1 year ago

      And don’t forget the Japanese Hakuto-R crashing last December. And we’ll start finding out soon if the new batch of American CLPS landers will work.

      As far as why - I have no idea why there are so many all of the sudden. For some reason the US and China are working on crewed moon landing programs and making a platoon of non-crewed landers to go with them. And for some reason Japan, India, and Israel all want in? And Russia wants to try to be relevant? I don’t get why, or why now, but at least it’s exciting.

      • TheCalzoneMan@beehaw.orgEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        I’m pretty sure this has something to do with using the Moon as a jumping-off point to the rest of the solar system. Assuming we can get a functioning colony on the Moon, it will be significantly easier and cheaper to get to Mars and potentially other planets as well. This might just be something I heard from a friend of a friend though, so don’t quote me on it.

        • zhunk@beehaw.orgOP
          2·
          1 year ago

          so don’t quote me on it.

          It’ll definitely help develop technology that’ll be useful for outer solar system missions.

          It doesn’t make sense as a stop between the Earth and Mars. You have to slow down to enter orbit, then speed back up to leave it. That’s a waste of fuel unless there’s a good reason to stop there, like for fueling or assembly, but it makes more sense to do that in Earth orbit using distributed life.

      • poVoq@slrpnk.net
        3·
        1 year ago

        At least to some extend it is a subsidy program to prop up or maintain a national launch fleet against stiff commercial competition (SpaceX) and to renew the local expertise to keep the ageing fleet of ICBMs going. The moon was and is a convenient excuse to waste tax money on this. Japan is one of the cases of ramping up a thinly veiled threat of nuke delivery capacity without officially saying so.

        • zhunk@beehaw.orgOP
          1·
          1 year ago

          I dunno about this take in this case. Most of the US CLPS landers are launching on Falcons. Literally all but 1 so far. PPE/HALO will launch on a Falcon Heavy. Gateway Logistics will launch on Falcons. The HLS options will launch on Starship and New Glenn. SLS will never fly a commercial flight, and Northrop is already getting big ICBM contracts.