Haven't seen anything about this on here yet. So, China landed a probe and rover on the Moon yesterday. Interesting stuff. The landing was successful, and the rover has deployed successfully. And some neat pictures to come, these earlier shots aren't the full HD pics that will come later. But here are a few early ones.
Shot of rover from lander:
Another rover shot:
gif of rover deployment:
http://i.imgur.com/1xT9ApY.gif
Moon surface:
Hopefully this will light a fire under our apathetic citizenry to FUND SUCH THINGS. Do you have any idea how open china will be with their findings?
Hard to say. They are normally fairly open about their science, especially if they get to appear groundbreaking or discover something before US/Russia/India/EU/Japan. Their space program is fairly new, but they've been fairly boastful for obvious reasons, which is good, and the fact that they televised the whole thing - possible failures and all - is a good sign. But then there's the ISS, NASAs official statement is that they have never invited China to join in on the ISS. But Russia said they invited them at one point and never heard back. http://www.space.com/8675-china-invited-join-international-s... It's interesting, because JAXA, ESA, CSA, and of course NASA and Roskosmos all take part physically, but NASA and Roskosmos are the only ones who have ever been capable of putting people into space, and China was the third. And yet no involvement of them? Seems kind of odd. There's also been visitors from 15 different nations to the ISS, none of them Chinese. The US is also pretty pissed about China shooting down satellites with missiles carelessly, creating tons of space debris. They have been derided and excluded from lots of space related projects as a result, this has been reported on, but it's also speculation to an extent of how much it affected space relations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_International_Space_Sta... China is also planning on building it's own space station, probably smaller like MIR, but at least the same idea of MIR and the ISS, a small modular space station. So who knows, they might not even want to be a part of our space program. Bottom line, they will share the science, because if they are going solo on their own space program they can take 100% of the credit if/when they break new findings. What if after all this time, China is the first country to discover life outside of Earth? Either way, I'm hoping this provokes some friendly non-military advancements in space exploration. I'm optimistic, and glad there's another major player in the game.Do you have any idea how open china will be with their findings?