China has landed its first rover on Mars – here’s what happens next | Hacker News Reader

China has landed its first rover on Mars – here’s what happens next

nature.com

30 pointsgmays24 comments

Fun facts:

  1. Mars is 火星 ("Planet of Fire") in Chinese.
  2. 祝融 Zhurong, as mentioned in the article, is the god of fire in Chinese mythology.

Humanity appears to have gone three for three in this Martian launch window with missions from NASA, China, and the UAE. An incredible achievement!

Bringing back Battle Bots?

Tbh I was hoping for Mars battle bot, but this is cool too.

I do hope that imagery from the Orbiter would be made available publicly, more information to map the Martian surface can only be helpful.

The touchdown was three (earth) days ago. I am surprised that so far _nothing_ has happened. No image or data published?

Is that normal or the sign of not-yet-admitted problems?

If this was NASA, the silence would be an ominous sign. NASA (JPL) typically sends back a picture ASAP because they live stream the whole event and know the world is watching. NASA loves press, and is very good at it. Unsurprisingly, China is being much more secretive. I don't think three days of silence is indicative of anything. This is their first rover. I'm sure they're taking their time. If a few weeks from now we still haven't received pictures or data, I'll start to suspect a failure.

> Unsurprisingly, China is being much more secretive.

But why?

Do you really need an explanation on why China historically doesn't like to share data?

About the success of their mars mission? Yeah?

I do. These are obviously "prestige programs" (well really duplicating a pervious iteration of the US space program).

I'm curious why they wouldn't release data on day one, unless something went wrong and they are trying to save face.

> Unsurprisingly, China is being much more secretive. I don't think three days of silence is indicative of anything. This is their first rover.

This. Mars missions have a very high probability of failure.

Nobody in China is going to get a huge benefit from livestreaming the success but they would get a huge downside for livestreaming the failure.

Rather sure the intelligence agencies know. They would just scan the spectrum looking for communications from Mars.

Pics or it didn't happen [0].

https://www.rocketlabusa.com/missions/completed-missions/pic...

Dumb expression. CGI is cheap and easy. A Mars rover is easy to detect by other nation-states.

Interplanetary battle bots

That’s a click bait title, I’m afraid to click.

How is it click bait? The headline is literally telling you exactly the contents of the article.

"Here's what happens next"

Again, what makes it click bait? It's telling you the article contents honestly. The colloquial style doesn't make it click bait.

> what makes it click bait?

"Here's what happens next"

Posing a question instead of a title that summarizes the content.

„X happened - see what happens next“ is a classical click bait example, which are often about trying to create a mystery that’s only resolved when clicking the thing. If the title was descriptive one could decide one is not interested.

>The mission “is a big leap for China because they are doing in a single go what NASA took decades to do”, says Roberto Orosei, a planetary scientist at the Institute of Radioastronomy of Bologna in Italy.

Passing a test is always easier when you copy off of the smart guy sitting next to you :p

Because USA #1?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com