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Japan's SLIM lunar lander? Survived a SECOND moon night!
This is pretty spectacular. It suffered a landing mishap when one of its engines failed and it toppled over to land on its face. Still, it got useful data - and the landing itself was quite a success in that it landed within a 100 meter target where it was supposed to. For an unmanned probe launched over 200,000 miles away, that's pretty much a bulls eye!
And then night came. It wasn't designed to survive the night, and the ground crew were resigned to that.
But when the next lunar day came, two weeks later, it woke up!
In the words of Monty Python, there was much rejoicing.
But then the next lunar night arrived, and the ground crew expected that to be the end of the probe.
Then two weeks later, the next lunar day arrived, and it woke up again!
It's not in that great of shape as it has been taking a beating with the lunar nights at over 200 degrees below zero Fahrenheit and the lunar days over 200 degrees above, but as I said before: they must have partnered with Timex because it's taking a licking and still ticking!
https://gizmodo.com/japans-slim-moon-lander-just-wont-die-1851371961
And then night came. It wasn't designed to survive the night, and the ground crew were resigned to that.
But when the next lunar day came, two weeks later, it woke up!
In the words of Monty Python, there was much rejoicing.
But then the next lunar night arrived, and the ground crew expected that to be the end of the probe.
Then two weeks later, the next lunar day arrived, and it woke up again!
It's not in that great of shape as it has been taking a beating with the lunar nights at over 200 degrees below zero Fahrenheit and the lunar days over 200 degrees above, but as I said before: they must have partnered with Timex because it's taking a licking and still ticking!
https://gizmodo.com/japans-slim-moon-lander-just-wont-die-1851371961
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Hugs, jon
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Heh! Yep, that characterizes it quite nicely.
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It's getting better!
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It's a pretty remarkable tale of engineering surviving far longer than expected, but it's also in a fairly crippled state and just barely hanging on.
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I expect their next craft to successfully land will be pretty spectacular.
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I read a social media post illustrating the difference between German and Japanese engineering, it was to illustrate cars but was overall generally applicable. The guy was a chemical filter engineer, and at the company he and his peers were sitting around BSing and a manager came in with a jar of blue goo saying that a customer complained that their filter had failed. It was supposed to filter whatever chemical. The engineer asked what concentration of whatever was being run through the filter, and the manager said 5.5%. And they laughed and said that filter was designed for 4% so clearly the customer was an idiot and they wouldn't put up with that sort of nonsense. On your bike and get out of here, and the manager left, suitably chastised. The analogy applied to cars was that German cars are designed to specific performance parameters, and they do great within those parameters if maintained well. Whereas Japanese cars are designed for parameters broader than what they advertise, and possibly more beyond that. And THAT is what SLIM is demonstrating! It probably won't go much beyond another lunar day/night cycle, but their next one is going to have some pretty freakin' cool longevity, I'll bet!
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Yeah, pretty much. Some Japanese engineers, I'm thinking specifically Toyota and Subaru, really overengineer their cars and they last. Others... I don't have personal experience and can't really comment.
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I had an '05 Matrix AWD, had it for ten years and some 150,000 miles, give or take. With the exception of a rock taking out the transmission pan and the instant death of the tranny, which isn't Toyota's fault, aside from standard maintenance, the only failure that I had was an ignition component began failing, which tripped a warning light but the car kept running. Cost some $300, as I recall, and that was it. Yeah, modern Toyota engineering is pretty good.