Footage of Chang'e-6's land on far side of the moon

[tectonic]

Super cool! We have been tracking this mission in Orbital Index for a while. https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2024-03-13-Issue-260/#chang...

This mission required a communication satellite that loiters on the far side of the Moon as well to relay communications back to earth. https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2024-03-13-Issue-260/#queqi...

[qingcharles]

Love Orbital Index... just realized I stopped getting emails from you guys in 2022 :( Does it auto-unsubscribe if I don't open one for a while? I was away from the Internet for a few months.

[gcanyon]

Nice work, go team human! From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang'e_6

"If the mission is successful, China will become the first nation to land, collect, and deliver samples back to Earth from the far side of the Moon."

[The_Colonel]

Your second sentence (even of it's a citation) makes this about competition, kinda negating the message of your first sentence.

[oefrha]

The video element didn't work for me on iOS Safari for some reason. Anyway here's the direct link to the video: https://www.sastind.gov.cn/video/0602ce6dl2.mp4

[punk_ihaq]

So cool! At 0:28, you can briefly see the shadow of one of the landers legs about to touchdown

[uncertainquark]

If anyone’s interested, I did a deep dive into the Chang’e 6 mission, including clarifying some misconceptions: https://jatan.space/moon-monday-issue-174/

[oefrha]

Thanks, this is the most informative writeup I’ve read about the current and upcoming missions.

[logtrees]

Amazing work Chang'e-6 team, amazing work China! Congratulations!

[Simon_ORourke]

Great work, I'm curious as to how autonomous the landing was (I assume fully autonomous) - but since there's awesome video sent back from the dark side of the moon there must be some relay in orbit too.

I'd give the Chinese space program more than a healthy 50/50 chance of landing humans on the moon again within the next ten years.

[ein0p]

I consider this unlikely - it is at least an order of magnitude harder to land people there and get them back even if you already have the heavy rockets and experience required. The US remains the only country capable of repeating this feat within the next 10 years, in spite of the current timelines being ridiculously unrealistic, simply because it doesn’t have to guess quite as much and either already has or in the advanced stages of building the necessary technological base.

[MaxPock]

And then you remember the Wolf Amendment that was enacted to hold back Chinese space efforts and you laugh . According to this American law ,NASA is not supposed to be in contact with the Chinese government or Chinese government affiliated organizations.

[overstay8930]

It was just to delay missile development as Chinese affaires were caught gathering information for non-scientific endeavors, anyone with half of a brain knows that China was going to do this eventually.

[jameshart]

Translations matter. There’s rather an important semantic distinction between claiming a ‘landing’ on the moon vs claiming ‘land’ on the moon.

Currently the headline on HN reads “Footage of Chang'e-6's land on far side of the moon”

[Dalewyn]

Looks like a bad translation, it's not even proper English.

NHK reports[1] that China announced Chang'e-6 "landed" (着陸, chakuriku) successfully on the far side of the Moon.

[1]: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20240602/k10014468871000.ht...

[MaximilianEmel]

It starts looking like a fractal halfway through.

[mmcconnell1618]

You can't really tell the scale of the craters because each time you get closer, more craters appear. I can imagine that even with stereoscopic eyes, a human could easily misjudge distance and scale too. We're not used to operating in such a barren environment.

[m_a_g]

Is the footage fast-forwarded? I'd imagine landing to be much slower.

Also, is that how the moon looks, or is this some kind of night vision?

[beefnugs]

camera footage taken in space is something weird indeed. I remember when i first saw how an eclipse affects shadows in real life. It immediately clicked in my brain why that early moon landing footage looked how it did. And also how easily so many people thought it was fake

[fernandopj]

Definitely. You can see the lander "breaking" to adjust fall trajectory twice, the actual burst wouldn't be that fast.

[ammo1662]

The "video" is not actually a video. It is composed by a series of images. So yes the video is fast-forwarded.

And the probe will hover above the landing area and use a laser to detect the surface to choose the landing point. It can be seen in the video.

[mdrewry]

true, but aren't all videos just individual frames played in a sequential order?

[tromp]

At 0:28 you can see a brief glimpse of part of Chang'e-6 itself.

[pavel_lishin]

I can't tell if that's part of the ship, or its shadow: https://i.imgur.com/NTiZuJe.png

[seatac76]

Good stuff. Very consistent program to moon they have there.

[ThinkBeat]

It is truly amazing how much engineering and science China has mastered.

They have the newest space station as well.

They appear to have made faster progress on production of more advanced computer chips as well but that requires some further investigation / proof.

This all while a single hostile nation wants to dictate what China is allowed or not allowed to buy on the free market.

[joshuaheard]

I love the spirit of the Chinese people, but much of the engineering and science China has was stolen from the "hostile nation". China also restricts who can enter its markets and censors its citizens from outside influences.

[skhunted]

This all while a single hostile nation wants to dictate what China is allowed or not allowed to buy on the free market.

Xi has abandoned the wise policies of Deng and is setting China back. Due to the idiocy of Xi it's not a single hostile nation as you put it. It's Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, India, the EU, Australia, and New Zealand.

[tw04]

It’s also fueled by rampant IP theft. It’s a lot easier to advance when you’re not actually inventing anything.

[huygens6363]

It’s a disgrace indeed. This fragile, completely open and transparant, utterly harmless human rights paradise wants to just grow a tiny bit while this single, isolated, hostile, aggressive and jealous close-minded nation wants to control them.