OT More fake news.

[harry]

The Chinese have allegedly landed a probe on the Dark side" of the moon and it's sending back pictures. How is this possible through thousands of miles of rock?.

The far side of the moon is not dark anyway.

[Scott]

Nor is it all dark, as suggested by Pink Floyd.

[Nick Odell]

As well as a lander they have an orbiter and that is relaying the pictures.

Having seen the promo video which includes a lot of CGI simulation the whole thing reminds me of The Clangers and I wonder if the mission was cooked up in a BBC studio somewhere with the help of Oliver Postgate.

Nick

[Andy Burns]

AFAIAA, they put a satellite in lunar orbit to communicate with the lander.

[charles]

perhaps they've left a repeater in orbit

so?

[Harry Bloomfield]

Scott wrote on 03/01/2019 :

It is called the dark side, because we never see it from the Earth.

[F]

[whisky-dave]

Yes it is as it only reflects light it doesn't create it's own light so it is therefor a dark object I think it's only about 8% reflective .

[whisky-dave]

It;'s not even a whole side I think we can see 58% of the moons surfacce from earth as it oscillates a bit so we see sa bit more than 50%.

[Andy Burns]

OK thanks, so it's not in lunar orbit, rather it's in orbit around the L2 point on the far side of the moon from the earth ... clever.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I asked Patrick Moore about that yonks ago during a break in a Sky at Night recording. Got a very nice explanation about how the moon sort of wobbles on its axis without turning.

[newshound]

Indeed.

Shouldn't under-rate the Chinese science and tech.

[Andy Burns]

I knew you could position on object at any of the L points (or near to them with fuel to apply corrections) but I didn't know you could orbit the points.

Now they've set up a satellite orbiting the Earth/Moon L2 point, does that create a "nested" set of L points between the moon and the satellite? Presumably that would give diminishing returns?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Probably

[Commander Kinsey]

But the satellite will only last for about 4 months then melt, catch fire, or otherwise fall to bits. I just had a Chinese glue gun go BANG! very loudly. I thought my cat had knocked over the TV.

[Commander Kinsey]

Not anymore, the bloody lunar vehicles will have those f****ng daytime running lights on all the time. There's no such thing as dark anymore.

[Nick Odell]

I saw the video embedded on the Independent.co.uk site. It mixed simulations of how they got the craft there with pictures of the Moon's surface taken by the lander. I'm sure that, if it's not still there, many more will be available.

Nick

[Bob Eager]

That would be hard work. He's been dead for ten years.

[Nick Odell]

Not if they had made the video -say- eleven years ago and had kept it under wraps waiting for the right moment like -say- the flypast of Ultima Thule by NASA's New Horizon, for instance?

Anyway, according to Inside Science today, the only people who didn't know about the Chinese Moon mission were the Chinese people themselves so I guess that busts apart my Oliver Postgate theory. Oh well....

Nick

[Harry Bloomfield]

Nick Odell submitted this idea :

I would imagine in would be very hard for the western nations to have not known there was something going on, with radio signals coming in regularly from the moon.