{"id":11619,"date":"2013-12-14T17:18:10","date_gmt":"2013-12-15T01:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/?p=11619"},"modified":"2013-12-14T17:18:10","modified_gmt":"2013-12-15T01:18:10","slug":"revisiting-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/14\/revisiting-the-moon\/","title":{"rendered":"Revisiting the Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the first time since 1976, an artificial vehicle has landed on on the Moon<\/a>. In this case it’s China’s Chang’e-3<\/a> mission, carrying a six-wheeled rover called Yutu<\/a> (“Jade Rabbit”). Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society blog<\/a> has made some animated gifs from the video broadcast by Chinese TV. (See below the fold.) Note that these were recorded and then played back at high speed; the rover was actually moving more slowly than portrayed here.
\n<\/p>\n

\"20131214_change3_rover_deploy_final\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When I mentioned this on Twitter<\/a>, I intentionally just said that “we” had landed a rover on the Moon, rather than “China” did it (although they certainly deserve the credit). That’s because it’s not a competition — achievements like this belong to the whole human race, not just one country or another. I’ll complain<\/a> when the US drops the scientific ball and lets other countries do all the work, but that’s because the US is a big, rich country that has the resources to be leading the way, and the whole world suffers when it chooses not to shoulder its share of the load. If NASA (or Fermilab or whoever) does something good, the proper response isn’t to be chanting “USA! USA!” It’s just to appreciate what human beings have become capable of — and look forward to what they will do next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the first time since 1976, an artificial vehicle has landed on on the Moon. In this case it’s China’s Chang’e-3 mission, carrying a six-wheeled rover called Yutu (“Jade Rabbit”). Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society blog has made some animated gifs from the video broadcast by Chinese TV. (See below the fold.) Note that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11619"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11622,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11619\/revisions\/11622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}