China successfully launches first lunar probe

reply to post by jra


So does that mean that it will have to remain on station for 20 years to send back the one years worth of mapping data that it is scheduled to do?

We 'll have a dome up on this side before it's done if that's the case.

Sorry to go a bit off-topic, but I feel the need to defend myself publicly (as I have, already, discussed this with the FSME of this forum, NGC2736).

Originally posted by ArMaP
What's wrong with this thread?

I think a thread for the images from the "Chang'e I" is enough.

Nothing is wrong with this thread. Did I ever state that something was wrong? What does your second sentence mean? Is it referring to this thread or mine?

Originally posted by sherpa
I know it was weirder than a very weird thing to me as well.

Who knows the arcane mysteries of they see ALL.

Don't you love me .

Here is my defense:

Simply, in creating a separate thread in John Lear's forum, I showed my interest in any/all conspiracy-related thoughts that John and/or zorgon (and any other ATSer, really) might share with us. I guess my thread should have been created in this forum, but, again, I really desired opinions from, among others, John and zorgon. This is why I placed it in his, John's, forum. Plus, there is a thread dedicated to Japan's probe in John's forum and so, I guess, I thought that his forum would be a great place for discussion/exposure.

I apologize for getting off-topic (and for being involved in some drama) .




[edit on 26-11-2007 by they see ALL]

reply to post by they see ALL


Oh, I don't see any drama. Maybe some duplication of effort, but that could be a good thing. We might get completely different insights from this two pronged approach.

After all, it's deny ignorance, wherever you can.

Originally posted by they see ALL
What does your second sentence mean? Is it referring to this thread or mine?

Any one of them, as I said, I think that one is enough, just that.

And if you had said that you had another thread about the images but with the idea of a having more conspiracy inclined discussion then I would have said nothing (maybe ).

Originally posted by NGC2736
So does that mean that it will have to remain on station for 20 years to send back the one years worth of mapping data that it is scheduled to do?

The HDTV camera doesn't have any part in the mapping of the Moon. It's purely a PR thing. The actual scientific instruments will send back data continuously, and no, that won't take 20 years.

This prediction if fulfilled in january would make a nice start to 2008.

China's space experts have predicted that the country will publish the whole lunar 3D image in January next year.

On Monday, China published its first moon image sent back by its lunar probe Chang'e-1, named after a mythical Chinese goddess who flew to the moon.

The picture was pieced together from 19 images, each covering a width of 60 kilometers of the moon's surface. The area covered by the picture, about 460 kilometers in length and 280 kilometers in width, is located within a 54 to 70 degrees south latitude and 57 to 83 degrees east longitude on the moon, according to sources with Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC).

Wu Ji, director of the Center of Space Science and Applied Research under CAS, the China Academy of Sciences, explained that the released image is a 2D picture, and researchers are working on the data sent back to formulate a 3D image, hoping to publish the picture as soon as possible.

The camera aboard China's lunar probe Chang'e-1 is a high performance CCD (Charge Coupled Device) stereo camera, which has three lenses to take photos of the lunar surface from three different angles to build up a 3D image.

Hao Xifan, deputy director of the Lunar Exploration Center of China's Commission of Science Technology and Industry for National Defense, said that the 3D image will possibly be published in January next year.

Chang'e-1 is expected to photograph the whole lunar surface in a month, as the moon's rotation period is one month.

After Chang'e-1 sends back the data, researchers have to spend months piecing together the data and complete the entire lunar surface image.

Jiang Jingshan, designer with the Chinese Lunar Orbiting Exploration program, said he was nervous when the camera first sent back a black image. But after a few seconds, clear images of the moon craters appeared, bringing much excitement to the space center.

Beijing Times reported that the Chief scientist Ouyang Ziyuan appraised the first image as very good. He said the image was only the start of Chang'e-1's exploration of the moon, and other pieces of equipment aboard the probe were still under testing.

www.china.org.cn...

Originally posted by johnb
Its interesting to watch the slow shift of power away from us in the west. We here in Europe lost our power base in the early to mid 20th century when it changed to the US and USSR and now the pendulum is swinging again this time towards China and India.

pendulum swing axe fall...

A while back I posted that NASA was working a 'deal' with China that if they scrapped their plan to send a man to the moon 'we' would finance a space station for them... I never heard more on that...

But today... there is THIS

China denies plans for manned Moon mission

The head of China's space agency has confirmed that his country has no plans to put a man on the Moon.

Sun Laiyan, chief of the China National Space Administration, said that the hurdles to manned space exploration are too great for the time being, and that his agency will concentrate on mechanical exploration.

"I have read reports by foreign media saying that China would carry a manned Moon landing in 2020, but I do not think there has been such a plan," Sun told the state run Xinhua News Agency at a press conference in Beijing.

www.vnunet.com...

To early to say "I told you so"

South Korea is stepping up to the starting line now too...

South Korea joins Asian space race
Plans to reach the Moon in 2020

www.vnunet.com...


With India's ship in April surely SOMEONE can send us a few decent pictures?




Any doubts that China and NASA are buddies?




MAUH HAHAHA

(That thar be NASA chief Griffin with the big smile after a 'rewarding' visit)


[edit on 29-11-2007 by zorgon]

Originally posted by they see ALLThis is why I placed it in his, John's, forum.

LOL I think THIS thread started out in John's forum

But there is some truth to the fact that multiple threads seem to draw different crowds... but it is very difficult to keep track of and monitor so many and still try to pass on the info to all

Good thing I have the website fro summary...

Hey ArMaP care to do some archiving? I need a title list with short description of about a 1000 pdf's

Originally posted by sherpa
Latest update:

...
Pang said the images taken by Chang'e I will be wider than those snapped by Japan's lunar probe.
...

Has anyone here confirmed that to be an actuality? Because if he means 'better resolution' then there's a problem.
According to the specs released on both CCD cameras, the Japanese one is supposed to be haivng a MUCH higher resolution(albeit a narrower swath) than the Chinese one.

According to China.org, the data from Chang'e-1 will be available to all.

Data from lunar orbiter available to all

Scientists and astronomy enthusiasts all over the country all have access to data sent back from China's first lunar orbiter Chang'e-I, a leading scientist in the program said on Sunday.

Ouyang Ziyuan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and chief scientist of the lunar exploration program, said at present that the scientific instruments on board the Chang'e-1 have all gone into operation and the satellite is sending back 3 trillion bits of data per second. The total data volume will reach 28 T (1 T is equivalent to 1,000 G) next year.

"The money used for the Chang'e project comes from the taxpayers and, therefore, the data should also be made public. Any scientist or astronomy enthusiast can apply to the state in accordance with state procedures to obtain data he needs," Ouyang said.

Source

So, they only have to apply for it in accordance with state procedures, but apparently leaving out those who pay taxes on different countries.


On a different note, some people think that the first photo from Chang'e-1 is strangely familiar...

China says moon pictures not faked from NASA

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has dismissed Internet gossip that its first photo of the moon taken from a lunar orbiter might have been plagiarized from NASA, local media said on Monday.

The country launched its first lunar probe, the Chang'e 1, in October and released a photo featuring a patch of grey moon surface splotched with craters last week, hailing the mission as a "complete success."

But some Chinese Internet users have questioned its originality after comparing it with an almost identical lunar image from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 2005.

Source

reply to post by ArMaP

On a different note, some people think that the first photo from Chang'e-1 is strangely familiar...

Yes I read this over on the other thread from an update that internos posted, Here, however he did post the 2 images, I fron US and 1 from China, and there does seem to be a difference, albeit by one additional crater.

I look forward to seeing some farside images though.

What is most exciting about this is that the Chinese are concerned over what a few of us "fringe loonies" are saying And it has not only come to there attention but they issued press statements to all the major news agencies...

Seems someone is paying attention to us loonies... do a search for "china moon image faked"and you will see the effect it has....

and still they only have ONE image... that save for an extra crater sure does look familiar... This is going to get interesting...

But hey guys can we all agree to pick one of these threads and keep it there? would be a lot easier

Couple of Questions....

From the Telegraph....

"But in a response to public scepticism unusual for such a token of national pride, internet bulletin boards began pointing out the similarity of the photograph to one published by NASA, the American space agency, two years ago."

Published TWO YEARS ago by NASA... anyone know which spacecraft took the NASA one on the left?...

From Fox News...

"Although almost all the features of the two images match, the Chinese image does shows an additional small crater overlapping a larger one near the middle of the photo."

Such an addition could have been Photoshopped in...."

www.foxnews.com...

Okay so why did the Chinese take a picture of the exact same area?

From the Telegraph...

"But there does seem to be an extra hole in the Chinese version, which Mr Ouyang attributed to the possibility that the surface had been struck by a meteorite or other celestial body in the last two years.

Or, he added, the Chinese photograph might just be of better quality than the American."

www.telegraph.co.uk.../news/2007/12/03/wchina103.xml

UPDATE...

Now we see all the parties lining up... as I said this is going to get interesting...


Moon photo mystery solved
Posted: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 5:30 PM by Alan Boyle
cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com...

In the week since the picture was released amid much fanfare in Beijing, there have been widespread rumors that the photo was a fake, copied from an old picture collected by a U.S. space probe.

The good news for the Chinese is that Planetary Society blogger Emily Lakdawalla's clears them of outright fakery. The bad news is, she found evidence that the photo was badly retouched for public release.

Okay so the image was cited by Fox as being a NASA image two years ago... here is the 'result'

[ex[Lakdawalla began her investigation by plowing through databases of lunar imagery and dredging up a U.S.-produced picture for comparison. It's not a NASA picture, as reported by the rumor mill. Instead, it's one of the tens of thousands of pictures taken by the Pentagon's Clementine lunar mapping orbiter back in 1994.

Its a Clementine Image... as we suspected... only problem I see here is that Clementine datasets are not available as photos of any one area you have to generate a specific area on the image mapper...

So how did we get an exact match with the Chinese one? Which came first the Chicken or the Egg...

The photo from China's Chang'e 1 orbiter is clearly a higher-resolution view, with sunlight streaming from the northwest rather than the north.

Well sure if you use the OLD data set... but if you use the later issued set or the color version this is not true. To bad no one is forthcoming with the coordinates of the Clementine image so we can go look ourselves...

And once you have stated its a Clementine... why further clarify its not a Lunar Orbiter image? (which it does look closer to )


So to further embarrass Bejing we get the exposure that the image (showing an extra crater) is a sloppy line up artifact...

"You know that there should have been seams in that image, and I just did not look for them carefully at the time," Lakdawalla told me today.

She said the Chinese must have blended together the seams between the strips - misplacing the crater. The picture may be pretty, but it's pretty much useless as a scientific product, Lakdawalla said.

True it may be... which certainly does not look good for China especially after all the hype...

Then up to the plate steps Phil Plait...

The detective work came in for kudos from other space mythbusters. "Go check out her really amazing sleuthing," said Bad Astronomy blogger Phil Plait. "This is how it's done, folks. Case closed!"

Next up to bat is James Oberg...

NBC News space analyst James Oberg, who has had his own experience with moon-hoax controversies, also saluted Lakdawalla's efforts. Even though the Chinese insist that the first picture from Chang'e is scientifically accurate, Oberg said he expected the Chinese to "be forced to backtrack a bit" once they see the full evidence.

With stuff like this at the beginning of the race... I would not be surprised if China did not release any more photos to us...

Perhaps this may even be the purpose of this recent soap opera... to distract us... but then... I am just a conspiracy nut

One comment from a reader on that site I thought was right on the money...

You know if space agencies are stupid enough not to learn from other mistakes they should stay on the ground. all it takes is one stupid blunder like this to throw all the respect for the program into the garbage, if you make a mistake fix it and don't try to hide it - Chris, Vernon, B.C.

cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com...

[edit on 7-12-2007 by zorgon]

[edit on 7-12-2007 by zorgon]

I really hate to say this, but I actually had higher hopes for this mission. This a bad way to start it off.

I certainly hope this whole effort shows some improvement, as so far the Chinese have done nothing to provide a lot of confidence to most people.

Their CCD camera doesn't have an impressive res anyways.
So don't get your hopes up too high!