3 ms·
In the vein of "any landing you can walk away from", between it (a) successfully deploying the sub-rovers (though maybe that happens slightly before contact?) (
by eichin 3y ago
In the vein of "any landing you can walk away from", between it (a) successfully deploying the sub-rovers (though maybe that happens slightly before contact?) (b) it communicating enough post-landing telemetry that they can diagnose things, I think that should count as "successfully landing". (One of the actual mission goals was ending up on the ground within meters of where they intended, and it sounds like they nailed that too?)
- tjpnz 3y agoNote that my comment was written when they were still trying to regain contact with the lander.
- talldatethrow 3y agoIf your main goal was to land and go forward with tests, but your landing started the soon to be demise of the cargo, I cant really say it's successful. It deployed the rovers similar to how injured pilots might still exist an aircraft after a crash. If they soon die due to solar panel issues from the crash, they didn't really walk away to live another day.
- eichin 3y agohttps://www.theregister.com/2024/01/29/japan_lander_wakes_up_takes/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/29/japan_lander_wakes_up... we didn't know this at posting time, but the solar panels weren't damaged, just pointed the wrong way, and when they finally got sunlight again, they were able to properly start the science mission. (Shortened, because it's not designed to survive the lunar night, but lots of neat "first time seen" data.) Also, I thought I read that at least one of the robots actually communicates directly with earth even if the lander is toast? Honestly I'm a little surprised that our first step at investigating a moon or planet in this century isn't "deploy a microsat version of GPS + TDRSS to simplify the landers" so that the first task of every mission is just "pop a gopro" :-)