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Six countries are about to go to the Moon – here’s why

Normille 4y ago
* South Korea’s Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) Good. Carry on. * Japan’s SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon) No! Please stop! * India’s Chandrayaan-3 Good. Carry on. * Russia’s Luna-2 Good. Carry on. * United Arab Emirates ... with a rover called Rashid Good. Carry on. What a shame Japan had no history or mythology to fall back on when naming its moon lander and had to adopt the excruciating American convention of trying to shoe-horn in some ridiculous 'acro-bbreviation' instead.
- pjc50 4y ago
  I checked their original press release and .. that's simply what it's called: https://www.jaxa.jp/press/2016/07/files/20160714_slim_01_j.pdf https://www.jaxa.jp/press/2016/07/files/20160714_slim_01_j.p... 小型月着陸実証機 (Small Moon Landing Demonstration Machine) Edit: https://www.isro.gov.in/chandrayaan2-faq https://www.isro.gov.in/chandrayaan2-faq "The name Chandrayaan means “Chandra- Moon, Yaan-vehicle”". Luna, of course, another word for moon. So almost all of these moon vehicles are simply named "moon vehicle" or synonym in another language.
  - Normille 4y ago
    Thart's not what I'm objecting to. It's those tortured acronyms that hurt my brain.
- mrastro 4y ago
  Contrarian opinion : to the extent this matters (which is not much), the acronym is fun and more memorable. You'll remember SLIM, even if you forget what the individual words it stands for, because it's a single word. Being memorable helps with getting public support by staying the public conscience which is needed for these multi-million dollar space investments.
  - Normille 4y ago
    The trouble is that, with a lot of these names, [although, to be fair, not in the case of SLIM] the acronym is so tortured it is of no help with remembering what it stands for, anyway. For example, they sometimes use the second letter of the word, or random pairs of letters... * JAXA – Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency * MESSENGER – MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging ...or miss words out entirely, when they don't fit the acronym: * BLAST – Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope * BOOMERanG –Balloon Observations of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation and Geophysics * FAME – Full-sky Astrometric Mapping Explorer * FIRST – Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters * HARPS – High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher * MARVEL – Multi-object Apache Point Observatory Radial Velocity Exoplanet Large-area Survey This one even uses other acronyms within its own acronym... * MUSTANG – Multiplexed SQUID TES Array at Ninety GHz So, as well as remembering what MUSTANG stands for, you also need to remember that the S = SQUID = "Simultaneous Quad Infrared Imaging Device" and the T = TES = 'Thermal Emission Spectrometer' Arrrghhh!Just make it stop, already! I can't help but imagine a scene like something from a Gary Larson cartoon; where a project chief sticks his head round the door of a research lab, saying "How are the designs for the Mercury probe coming on?" whilst a room full of white coated scientists guiltily covert up scraps of paper on which they've been idly doodling 'MERCY.. MIDAS... MUON... MONTAGE...' etc. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_astronomy_acronyms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_astronomy_acronyms
hulitu 4y ago
Finally they found oil there. Who would have thought.
candiodari 4y ago
They forgot Israel's recent "landing" on the moon. Privately funded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beresheet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beresheet It got to the moon surface, just a little faster than anticipated. They'll try again in 2024.
- helsinkiandrew 4y ago
  They mentioned the crash: "Israel’s privately developed Beresheet lander also smashed into the surface earlier that year."
formerkrogemp 4y ago
Who is going to occupy the moon and its southern pole first, y'all? Interesting times.
simne 4y ago
I'm sure, Russia in this list is mistake. Because, Russia put everything on war in Ukraine, and it will not finish at least this year. And Lunar race is expensive - imagine, US spent few percents of their GDP on Apollo program. Even now, not exists any Lunar program without wide international partnership, and because of war, all serious partners broke relations with Russian space. So just economical considerations, won't allow Russia to participate. PS in another Universe, where Russia was not invade Ukraine, and not subject to sanctions, possible participation of Russian space in international lunar activities, but in our, all changed on February 24.
bergenty 4y ago
You cannot call what UAE is doing it’s own attempt. It’s a non indigenous rover being flown on SpaceX’s rocket.
- vanattab 4y ago
  Are they funding it? That's not nothing. The Apollo rocket owes much to von Bruan and other German rocket scientists who came to the states. So did the nazi's really go to the moon.
  - bergenty 4y ago
    The Nazis had rudimentary rockets, so did India 300 years before then. They came, developed the idea and stayed by becoming American citizens.

* South Korea’s Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) Good. Carry on. * Japan’s SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon) No! Please stop! * India’s Chandrayaan-3 Good. Carry on. * Russia’s Luna-2 Good. Carry on. * United Arab Emirates ... with a rover called Rashid Good. Carry on. What a shame Japan had no history or mythology to fall back on when naming its moon lander and had to adopt the excruciating American convention of trying to shoe-horn in some ridiculous 'acro-bbreviation' instead.

pjc50 4y ago
I checked their original press release and .. that's simply what it's called: https://www.jaxa.jp/press/2016/07/files/20160714_slim_01_j.pdf https://www.jaxa.jp/press/2016/07/files/20160714_slim_01_j.p... 小型月着陸実証機 (Small Moon Landing Demonstration Machine) Edit: https://www.isro.gov.in/chandrayaan2-faq https://www.isro.gov.in/chandrayaan2-faq "The name Chandrayaan means “Chandra- Moon, Yaan-vehicle”". Luna, of course, another word for moon. So almost all of these moon vehicles are simply named "moon vehicle" or synonym in another language.
- Normille 4y ago
  Thart's not what I'm objecting to. It's those tortured acronyms that hurt my brain.
mrastro 4y ago
Contrarian opinion : to the extent this matters (which is not much), the acronym is fun and more memorable. You'll remember SLIM, even if you forget what the individual words it stands for, because it's a single word. Being memorable helps with getting public support by staying the public conscience which is needed for these multi-million dollar space investments.
- Normille 4y ago
  The trouble is that, with a lot of these names, [although, to be fair, not in the case of SLIM] the acronym is so tortured it is of no help with remembering what it stands for, anyway. For example, they sometimes use the second letter of the word, or random pairs of letters... * JAXA – Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency * MESSENGER – MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging ...or miss words out entirely, when they don't fit the acronym: * BLAST – Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope * BOOMERanG –Balloon Observations of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation and Geophysics * FAME – Full-sky Astrometric Mapping Explorer * FIRST – Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters * HARPS – High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher * MARVEL – Multi-object Apache Point Observatory Radial Velocity Exoplanet Large-area Survey This one even uses other acronyms within its own acronym... * MUSTANG – Multiplexed SQUID TES Array at Ninety GHz So, as well as remembering what MUSTANG stands for, you also need to remember that the S = SQUID = "Simultaneous Quad Infrared Imaging Device" and the T = TES = 'Thermal Emission Spectrometer' Arrrghhh!Just make it stop, already! I can't help but imagine a scene like something from a Gary Larson cartoon; where a project chief sticks his head round the door of a research lab, saying "How are the designs for the Mercury probe coming on?" whilst a room full of white coated scientists guiltily covert up scraps of paper on which they've been idly doodling 'MERCY.. MIDAS... MUON... MONTAGE...' etc. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_astronomy_acronyms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_astronomy_acronyms

hulitu 4y ago

Finally they found oil there. Who would have thought.

candiodari 4y ago

They forgot Israel's recent "landing" on the moon. Privately funded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beresheet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beresheet It got to the moon surface, just a little faster than anticipated. They'll try again in 2024.

helsinkiandrew 4y ago
They mentioned the crash: "Israel’s privately developed Beresheet lander also smashed into the surface earlier that year."

formerkrogemp 4y ago

Who is going to occupy the moon and its southern pole first, y'all? Interesting times.

simne 4y ago

I'm sure, Russia in this list is mistake. Because, Russia put everything on war in Ukraine, and it will not finish at least this year. And Lunar race is expensive - imagine, US spent few percents of their GDP on Apollo program. Even now, not exists any Lunar program without wide international partnership, and because of war, all serious partners broke relations with Russian space. So just economical considerations, won't allow Russia to participate. PS in another Universe, where Russia was not invade Ukraine, and not subject to sanctions, possible participation of Russian space in international lunar activities, but in our, all changed on February 24.

bergenty 4y ago

You cannot call what UAE is doing it’s own attempt. It’s a non indigenous rover being flown on SpaceX’s rocket.

vanattab 4y ago
Are they funding it? That's not nothing. The Apollo rocket owes much to von Bruan and other German rocket scientists who came to the states. So did the nazi's really go to the moon.
- bergenty 4y ago
  The Nazis had rudimentary rockets, so did India 300 years before then. They came, developed the idea and stayed by becoming American citizens.