Chang'e 3 - China Rover Separates From Lander, Now On Moon's Surface

[deuem]

My guess is that whoever designed this contrapion will be fired! The electronics should have been protected even if fail mode. When designing anything worth while. Deuem rule #1: Design it to fail in your favor. Not always easy to do but if you think it through it can be done. Does it spring open or closed. If you want it to fail in the closed mode then that is how it should be designed. You work to keep it open.

Deuem

[sky otter]

deuem..sometimes toys break 

[deuem]

I know but this is a multi-million dollar toy, that was desinged to fail. I wonder what testing they did. PRC IG should build one.    The moment they said it had to close otherwise fail I knew it would fail. Someone cut the wrong corners. IMO.

Deuem

[rdunk]

Well Deuem you may be right. But, over my life I have worked with almost every area of aircraft and broad-scale electronic engineering. They design to cost and design specifications, to include whatever the lifecycle requirements are. Of course, with anything that lifts off the surface of the earth, weight is at the top of the list of #! important things to a satisfactory design.

But, in such case as this, there is always to expect the "face-saving" reason for a premature failure. In this case, I am reasonably certain the failure will be attributed to Moon "Global Cooling", because of the quietness of the Sun!

[deuem]

Most engineers her design stuff to fail or right on the min level that is not taken very well. Once they do this it is very hard to re-train them to make something to work for longer than it is plugged in at the store. If they used a design crew that does this for a living, that is where the failure started. It is not that cold on the moon. Even if one wrong part was in there, that is all it takes.

I would need to see the entire plans, drawing and testing they did to make a real call. This I will never get. But I think a head or two will roll on this no matter what happened. It is the way of the socity. it is too bad it had to fail, it was just getting interesting.

Deuem

[ArMaP]

Do electronics "freeze"?

[rdunk]

Do electronics "freeze"?

I am no expert, but extreme cold is ot good for displays and batteries.

[Sgt.Rocknroll]

Won't power supplies freeze?

[ArMaP]

I am no expert, but extreme cold is ot good for displays and batteries.

LCD displays freeze because they are "Liquid Crystal Displays", batteries may be affected because of a lower internal resistance, as cold reduces the resistance.

[deuem]

Depending on how circuit boards are mounted or set up, when it gets cold or frozen, other things can move and the lines on the board can snap. One snapped run can ruin the entire board if it is not set up redundant.

I still think there is a error in their setup that allows it to fail at all for this reason. This is dangerous work to start with for electronics.

Deuem

[rdunk]

Well, this story is not dead yet!! China says, "Yutu ain't dead yet"!


China's lunar rover "awakes" despite abnormality:

BEIJING, Feb. 13 (Xinhua) 

China's moon rover Yutu has waken up from a troubled dormancy although experts are still trying to figure out the cause of its abnormality, a spokesman with the country's lunar probe program said on Thursday.

"Yutu has come back to life!" said Pei Zhaoyu, the spokesperson.

Pei said the moon rover, named after the pet of a lunar goddess in ancient Chinese mythology, has now been restored to its normal signal reception function. But experts are still working to verify the causes of its mechanical control abnormality.

The abnormality emerged before Yutu entered its second dormancy on the moon on Jan. 25 as the lunar night fell.

"Yutu went into sleep under an abnormal status," Pei said , adding that experts were initially concerned that it might not be able to survive the extremely low temperatures during the lunar night.

"The rover stands a chance of being saved now that it is still alive," he said.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/sci/2014-02/13/c_133111548.htm

[deuem]

This has signs of Vger all over it.

Glad to hear this. Guess the ice cubes got knocked off the chips. Hope they close the door next time.

Maybe the aliens fixed it for the Chinese. I hope the sweeped up their foot prints.

Deuem

[Ellirium113]

China's Yutu lunar rover finds moon geography more complex than thought

by Bob Yirka

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers working on China's Chang'E-3 lunar mission has found multiple distinct geographic rock layers beneath the surface of the moon, indicating a much more complex geographical history than was previously thought by most in the scientific community. In their paper published in the journal Science, the team describes their analysis of data sent back by the Yutu rover.

On December 14, 2013, China's China's Chang'E-3 spacecraft touched down on the surface of the moon, the first to conduct a soft landing since the Soviet Union sent craft back in 1976. A few hours after landing, a rover named Yutu (Jade Rabbit) was released from the craft and set off on a zig-zag course across the nearby terrain. Onboard the rover was a variety of sensor equipment, one of which offered Lunar Penetrating Radar (LPR) capable of probing up to 400 meters below the lunar surface. The rover captured subsurface data for approximately a month before technical problems caused it to shut down.

In this new report, the researchers studying the data sent back by the rover report that LPR revealed nine distinct rock layers beneath the surface, indicating a geographical history far more complex than has been theorized. The layering is due, apparently, to lava flows which were mixed with regolith (lunar dust formed by weathering). The data sent back from Yutu is the first to reveal deep subsurface details—during the Apollo missions, drills were used to gather samples of subsurface rock, but they only penetrated to a depth of three meters.

The team notes that in studying the rock layers, they made two important finds, the first was that the evidence shows that the moon has had far more volcanic activity than has been thought and the second was that the area under study showed that in addition to basalt there was pyroclastic rocks, an indication of explosive activity. Most who have studied the moon have believed that volatile gasses trapped in the mantle escaped while the moon was still forming. This new evidence suggests that was not the case.

The team also notes that the composition of the geography where Yutu was operating appeared to be quite different from that observed by the U.S.'s Apollo missions and the U.S.S.R.'s Luna missions.

http://phys.org/news/2015-03-china-yutu-lunar-rover-moon.html