India has launched its Chandrayaan-3 mission, which aims to explore the south pole of the moon by rover, completing a scientific mission that was first attempted in 2019 but ended in catastrophic failure due to a software glitch

#space #india #moon

  • McBinary@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Dope. The more stellar exploration, the better. I don’t care who is doing it as long as it’s happening. I wish someone would find a huge vein of some valuable resource on the moon or mars so it would hurry up the exploitation crowd that typically drives expansion…

    I wonder what happened to the U.S. initiative to mine helium-3 from the moon? There was a plan to create a moon base a few years ago specifically for that.

    • Isn’t Helium-3 mainly used for fusion reactors? So as long as fusion reactors are still just in an early prototype phase, such a mining operation is probably not really lucrative.

      • McBinary@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        There is a lot of countries in the world that still use nuclear fusion, and despite doomsayers it’s still the best option for the future…

        edit: to correct Fission > Fusion

          • McBinary@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            hmm, I guess I’m wrong. I read about helium-3 a long time ago and I must have mistaken the purpose. I guess helium-3 is a byproduct of fission and can be used for fusion, but the energy cost to produce it in this manner is massive and isn’t sustainable.

            Helium-3 is filtered out by the atmosphere so very little of it occurs naturally on earth, the lunar surface was the best/easiest place to mine for it.

  • mmatessa@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    If successful, India will be the fourth country to land on the Moon besides the US, the USSR, and China.
    (China has had rovers on the Moon since 2013)