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China lands Chang'e 6 sample-return probe on far side of the moon
- jaggs 2y ago[flagged]
- nebula8804 2y agoThe thing is being reported on space.com. According to their owner's bio: "We're home to the world's top specialist media brands, reaching 1 in 3 adults online in the us and the uk"
- anigbrowl 2y agoThing is this should be a top mainstream news story, not one on a niche website.
- ARandomerDude 2y agoYou mean like https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-probe-successfully-lands-far-230310043.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-probe-successfully-lands-fa...
- anigbrowl 2y agoYes, but look at how few comments there are on those articles, suggesting the story got very little engagement. This is generally a sign of low initial placement. Unfortunately since we've handed a lot of editorial decisions over to algorithmic curation, relevant stories (eg to a 'science' section) often fail to get the attention they deserve at the time of publication.
- neom 2y agoGoogle News on the subject lists a pretty decent number of mainstream news orgs: https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=09b2a16ac252101f&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ADLYWIIGE0GBh2vuT_1NLxo8MC4cMTN-IQ:1717390551341&q=china+moon&tbm=nws https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=09b2a16ac252101f&sca_u...
- gravescale 2y agoI didn't see the BBC one on the front page at all, and it's currently well below the fold of the Science & Health section, despite being two days more recent than "plant with biggest genome found" (most of the rest is health science and generic "health content" like TV shows). There's even an article about SAR radar satellites above it, so it's not even the top space story today. It's certainly false to say that it's not in the mainstream media, but I think it's also fair to say it's not exactly top of the bill. For comparison, Chandrayaan-3 was below only Prigozhin's death last August (https://web.archive.org/web/20230823204015/https://www.bbc.com/news https://web.archive.org/web/20230823204015/https://www.bbc.c...) and the Chandrayaan programme has its own subcategory. To be fair that was the first Indian landing of any kind, so yes, a bit different. Not sure Chandrayaan-3 made CCTV top bill either, though! (It was reported, under the Chinese translated name 月船3号, just I don't know how high up it was on the day).
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoIt really depends how it compare to Trump’s conviction. The news is politically dominated these days by that and Gaza. CCTV 7PM news cast will always spend half the news cast detailing what Xi did that day, so it crowds out all the room for science topics. It’s a side story in China daily, and a top story on global times, which is about what I would expect.
- prawn 2y agoI was surprised to not see it on the Guardian's front page. It's prominent on the World News sub-page though.
- ordu 2y agoNot the top. At least not in US. At the time of Apollo program Americans became bored by news of Moon landings and new footprints in the Moon dust. One more Chinese probe is not big enough news. China already did that, nothings really new.
- gravescale 2y agoIt is the first ever far-side sample-return mission ever (and I think only the second far-side landing at all, the first being Chang'e 4 in 2019), so there's certainly some non-trivial element of "doing something no one has done before". And the far side is somewhat geologically (selenologically?) different to make that a useful scientific thing rather than solely for bragging rights, not that those aren't in the calculus with these things. Chang'e 7 will be pretty interesting as it's going to Shackleton crater, which is a hypothetised water source (though evidence of surface ice is pretty weak) and has never been explored other than orbitally and an impactor from Chandrayaan-1.
- Ankaios 2y agoNASA's current and near-future science missions: https://smd-cms.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/smd-fleet-master-10-15-2023.pdf https://smd-cms.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/smd-flee...
- basementcat 2y agoOne of the upcoming Nova-C flights to the moon is scheduled to carry CADRE, a small "swarm" of networked rovers. If you are registered to vote in the USA, perhaps consider asking your members of Congress to not cut funding to the project. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-network-of-small-moon-bound-rovers-is-ready-to-roll https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-network-of-small-moon-bo...
- LeoPanthera 2y agoPlease don't assume just because you don't read the news. NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/02/world/asia/china-moon-landing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/02/world/asia/china-moon-lan... WP: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/06/02/china-space-change-6-moon-dark-side/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/06/02/china-space-... Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-01/chinese-spacecraft-makes-historic-landing-on-far-side-of-moon https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-01/chinese-s... Many others: https://news.google.com/stories/CAAqNggKIjBDQklTSGpvSmMzUnZjbmt0TXpZd1NoRUtEd2l0b19uYkN4RVE1Wnl5dVNRVk1pZ0FQAQ?ceid=US:en&oc=3 https://news.google.com/stories/CAAqNggKIjBDQklTSGpvSmMzUnZj...
- paganel 2y agoIt’s not on the front page of the NYTimes (I’ve checked on mobile) as I’m writing this, the search for “China” only gave me an article about some small island being afraid of said China (which is par for the course for one of West’s paper of record) Nothing on the BBC’s front page either, only something about China accusing the MI6 of something (?!).
- LeoPanthera 2y agoYou know this happened 2 days ago, right? I don't know why you would expect it to be on the front page of anything today.
- paganel 2y agoNo, I don’t, which makes it even more interesting. I know though that ItaloDisco is now Nazi music, via the same Western media from the last few days.
- sokols 2y agoI heard the news on BBC World Service for example.
- WhoAmThing 2y agoDoes this mark the moment in history where China has now surpassed the US and is the new global superpower? The scale and rate at which China is innovating in space, science, and technology is pretty compelling for the majority of the world.
- upon_drumhead 2y agoIf it wasn't for SpaceX, perhaps, but with SpaceX in the equation, no, it doesn't shift any geopolitical power.
- audunw 2y agoEven without SpaceX I think USA is well ahead of China in this area. There are many other companies and projects well ahead of what China is doing.
- khuey 2y ago> Does this mark the moment in history where China has now surpassed the US and is the new global superpower? Why would it? The US returned rocks from the moon over half a century ago.
- rockemsockem 2y agoAnd better yet, returned rocks from an asteroid in the last couple years.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- gravescale 2y agoI'd reserve transferring the title for being first to hit industrially-useful fusion power, but I'd also accept a permanent non-LEO space colony. Which is to say, I'm not holding my breath for a handover just yet.
- 2y ago
- shunia_huang 2y agoIntrestingly reading the news first here rather than from a local media as a Chinese. And after this I try to find news on lcoal media and where I normally get news from, but it's obviously not on any front page or things like that. It is fun.
- verisimi 2y agoIsn't this sort of thing considered important news on China?
- shunia_huang 2y agoIt definitely is, it's just seems not that important as we had like the previous human or rocket lunches, and I don't know why.
- gravescale 2y agoIt's the top headline slot (well, one of three in a rotating carousel thingy) at http://news.cctv.com http://news.cctv.com right now. (But, full disclosure, I actually read it at Slashdot first).
- fastball 2y agoWow Slashdot still exists?
- gravescale 2y agoIt's full of raging wierdos and you don't seem to be able to actually sign up without requesting via email (probably just as well), but it actually does seem to be pretty quick off the mark with headlines. Unicode is still broken, which is a nice touch.
- narrator 2y agoSlashdot curates a lot of good stories even though the comments section is, IMHO, garbage.
- danielpetrica 2y agoIt's nice to see progress in space exploration. I saw the landing footage and is beautiful. Congratulations for a nice achievement to the people working on this project
- gravescale 2y agoI'm always blown away by these missions. So much has to go so right, in extreme conditions and almost entirely autonomously, with every fault path considered and accounted for as best as possible. And no-one to give the drill a bit of a wiggle if it's stuck. I'd kill for a fully detailed machined metal scale model (but I know I couldn't afford it: edit: actually, 500 yuan ish from Taobao, perhaps not fully detailed, but I'm tempted).
- imtringued 2y agoStop! That is the "Old Space" approach. The "New Space" approach is better and faster. Just ship it and try again, if it doesn't work. Oh wait...
- SiempreViernes 2y agoSadly to me this success isn't so much indicative of progress in space exploration (this effort isn't part of a coordinated international project), but rather a reminder that soon we'll hear about US politicians talking about how to fight the Chinese on the moon. I've already head national "security" experts talk of "hostile Chinese action on the moon" (without specifying further) and "Chinese efforts to control cislunar space" (again without clarifying what that would involve). Further, citing the need to counter China the US has announced plans to send military satellites to "patrol" the Earth-Moon L2 point (a surveillance satellite as well as an ASAT capable satellite). In other words, the US is well on its way to bring war to the Moon.
- gravescale 2y ago> isn't part of a coordinated international project Maybe not "coordinated" but they do have some collaboration with Italian, French, Swedish and Pakistani teams on this one. Chang'e 7 has Egyptian/Bahraini, Italian, Swiss, Thai, Russian and an international lunar group's payloads. The Wolf Amendment makes it impossible for NASA to cooperate with China at all, so a competitive stance is really the best we can hope for (the worse alternative bring an outright adversarial one), unless the ESA can wiggle a stabilising middle path between the two sides. > Without clarifying what that would involve I imagine ASAT weapons around L2 would fit that bill!
- lyu07282 2y agoDrilling 2 meters down for samples on the moon is pretty impressive. I believe there are also some samples lying around Mars ready for pickup and return in a few years. I'm far less excited and more worried about Artemis, it's so clearly the wrong approach smh
- rcarmo 2y agoYep. And bringing back samples of different cheese^Wregolith might provide additional insights as to its formation (although 2 meters might not seem very impressive, it might span millions of years of undisturbed “soil” deposition)
- gravescale 2y agoI dunno, 2 metres sounds pretty impressive to me. That's just over 1 MJ (Michael Jordan). Remotely, in vacuum, in stony electrostically evil regolith which might also be big solid bits and no takebacksies on the drilling site. Apollo 17 was three metres deep, but they had a meatbag-in-a-bag to feed in drill segments and keep things under control. Which has its own tricky technicalities to keep the meat fresh and moving, to be sure. But it does simplify the other mechanisms.
- Oarch 2y agoBit disappointing I've not read any conspiracy theories on this yet. China. Dark side of the moon. Seems ripe, shall we get one going?
- 93po 2y agoit's a country full of pink floyd fans