Even if it landed correctly, why would they plan a solar powered mission to the moon when our next lunar eclipse is in like 5 days?
How would a secondary power source save it from being tipped over? That’s a mission ending failure no matter how many redundant power sources you have.
Being tipped over doesn’t inherently stop all of its equipment from working, I’m sure at least some of the sensors could otherwise still work, if they had power.
Even if only 10% of the sensors and equipment could still work, 10% would still be better than 0%.
True, but communication could still be a problem.
Generally this kind of probe will have a highly directional antenna that has pretty strict limits on it’s aim. We would have to be very lucky for the antenna to not get damaged during the fall and end up in a position where it can still establish a connection. Even if all the science is fine, it’s as good as useless if it can’t communicate any results or accept commands.
Ah, but it did send data back before the battery ran down, at least enough data to confirm it fell over when it landed.
It’s all about weight when going to space. It’s one of the basic parts of rocket science. If you want to send 1 pound into space, you need to add gas to cover that weight, and the weight of the gas you add. Eventually you reach a point where the combined weight of the gas is more than the thrust it provides and you can’t add more. Solar is light, a few hours of no power isn’t a big deal over months or years of operation time, if you are confident things will come back on when there’s light again.
Eclipses end, though. Being tipped over does not.
Quite true. Strangely, here on Earth they have smart robots that you can literally kick over sideways, and their sensors and hydraulics and stuff kick right in and set them back upright.
If you’re gonna dump hundreds of millions of dollars into such a project, why not utilize all known, available, and proven technology?
Weight. That’s the only actual answer.
It’s extremely expensive to send weight to the moon, everything you list is more weight.
More weight but functioning vs multi-million-paperweight?
You’re looking at it with hindsight. Sure it feels like spending another million $ designing, testing, and adding additional weight, along with removing weight from other parts looks like the right decision now.
Every design makes compromises, and every failure looks stupid when looking at the end result. The team had decisions to make and if they had the extra time and money, then making the existing design more robust with more testing and reliability would have been the better solution.
What other power source? There is only solar and nuclear in space. And not even NASA does nuclear unless absolutely required for the mission.
We have uranium in our tap water here. As long as it remains less that 43 parts per million, they consider it ‘safe’. With hundreds of millions of dollars to throw around, it can’t be all that difficult to filter enough uranium out for the energy for a two week mission.
And it was a private spacecraft, not made by NASA (although it carried some of their sensors and equipment).
You don’t know how nuclear power works.
Not directly, no. But my late father was a nuclear reactor cooling technician, I did learn quite a bit more than the average person.
Sure you did.
That’s just private-sector efficiency taking control.
Chief O’Brien would be so disappointed. he wouldn’t like to be caught without a secondary backup in a crunch.
