South Korea's Moon orbiter snaps India's lander

South Korea's science ministry has released a photo taken by the nation's Danuri Moon orbiter depicting the landing site of India's Chandrayaan-3 Moon mission. The lunar orbiter's side hustle as space paparazzi saw it take the snap on August 27 – four days after Chandrayaan-3 became India’s first successful Moon landing, and …

[sitta_europea]

On Earth, Prydz bay

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prydz_Bay

is at about the same latitude as the latest Lunar lander.

I don't think anyone would have said Shackleton had reached the South Pole when he got to that latitude, since he still had 1,200 miles to go...

It's not so far from 70 degrees to the pole on the Moon as it is on Earth, but it's still over 300 miles.

[John Brown (no body)]

Not only that, but the South Korean orbiter, at a distance of about 100km, was closer to the lander while still in orbit, than the lander is to the Moons south pole.

[artificial bitterness]

Computer...

Enhance!

[WereWoof]

IDEFIX

Idefix was renamed to Dogmatix for certain version of the Asterix comics IIRC.

[M.V. Lipvig]

That's neat and all, but that Indian lander looks a lot like the US lander from the 1970s. I wonder why they chose a lander design meant for carrying people for an unmanned mission? Anyone heard whether or not India is planning manned missions?

[ravenviz]

The design is proven so why fix it if it ain’t broke?

Besides, it’s only 2 m tall, the Apollo landers were 7 m tall.

[M.V. Lipvig]

As good a reason as any other, if it didn't cost probably 40 grand USD per launched pound for a Moon shot. Going the extra weight would imply testing for other uses.