India pokes Vikram with a stick, drill-toting robot lands on Earth, UK plans launch site, and more

It was a busy last week for space fans as drill-wielding humanoid robot Fedor returned from space, India's Vikram lunar lander failed to return signals from the Moon and the Vega launcher inched closer to a return to flight. India's Schrödinger's Moon lander Confusion continued to reign over the fate of India's Vikram lunar …

[Anonymous Coward]

Galileo

> Assuming, of course, that signal can be picked up

This is the system that can be jammed "for hours or days" "at significant distance" by perfectly legitimate ham radio activity, is it? (WRC-19 proposal Paper AI10 - Proposal on AS-RNSS, as quoted by Southgate AR News).

[phuzz]

Re: Galileo

The high accuracy part of the signal ('CS') uses the same frequencies as amateur radio, but the main location signal uses similar frequencies as other positioning systems (ie GPS, GLONASS etc.), so it would still work fine.

[itsborken]

Mysterious drill holes in ISS?

Now the drill-wielding robot Fedor is sent back. Nothing to see here, move along sir.

[Grikath]

Vikram

A bit of Napkin-Fu applied to the data applied by Vulture Central in their articles tells me that the plucky probe was doing a minimum of around 210+ km/h (130 mph for the imperially challenged) when they lost contact. With friction not applying on the moon, that means slightly less than 30 seconds to go...

I doubt the probe was as smart as Neil Armstrong, nor as lucky as a certain F3 driver hitting a kerbstone last weekend at Monza at roughly the same speed/time constrictions...

If things went really wrong and it didn't throttle down.... What was its vector of approach, how many seconds of fuel did it have to spare, and was there anything significant in the way of that particular extended trajectory ? Not enough data, but a nice exercise for future rocketeers...

[My-Handle]

Re: Vikram

Scott Manley has a fairly good analysis of the situation on his channel, given the admittedly sparse information available.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xKJG00-S_c

Looks like some non-ISRO personnel were measuring the doppler shift of the lander's communications signal carrier wave as a proxy for it's speed. Looks like it hit the surface suddenly at an oblique angle, at a speed in the hundreds of metres per second. So doesn't look great for the lander.

[Anonymous Coward]

Vikrammed

Lander located:

There....and there, and there, and there, and some more over there...

[Wiltshire]

Scots In Space!

Regarding Space Hub Sutherland.

This is proposed by the Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE). Roy Kirk is HIE’s Space Hub Sutherland project director. The facility would be sited between Cape Wrath and Thurso, and reached via a bridge across the Kyle of Tongue.

Let's hope there's (not) some problem with the bridge.

Wait for it ....

Kirk to the bridge!