Comments on: China’s moon probe sends its first full resolution picture to Earth

By: Hendrik

Hendrik — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 02:30:22 +0000

Last month they did release another photo, but the media didn’t really pick it up.
Indeed the difference of how NASA does public relations and how CNSA does it are pretty different. But who can blame them? China is still ruled by a unelected government. They don’t need to do anything.
I will try to find the recently released moon picture again and post it.

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:20:48 +0000

I would like to see a follow up: one thing I have noticed is that only ONE (1) photo has ever been released by China. ONE! When other countries send stuff up, hundreds, even thousands of photos are obtained. Here, we have one. Did the probe break down? Did it fly by the moon and not enter orbit? Why only one photo?

By: Hendrik

Hendrik — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 05:28:05 +0000

So far there are no missions sent to the moon which are able to deliver pictures in a good enough resolution to confirm or deny anything.

October 2008 there will be a mission sent to the moon called LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter). It will be able to deliver pictures with a resolution of 0.5m per pixel. On these You can see things like the lunar rovers and the landing stage modules of the previous human lunar explorations.

By: doug nickason

doug nickason — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:12:12 +0000

Did you ever consider that a possible reason why the detailed pictures have not been published yet (and may never be), is because it proves that the u.s. never went there. There are no foot prints, lunar rovers, u.s. flags, or remains of lunar module in these photos. The u.s. owes china billions if not trillions in debt and I believe that the photos are being used as “leverage” to encourage the u.s. to pay back the loan. China could be using the threat of exposing a huge u.s. hoax to the moon to force the u.s. to pay.

By: YoLearnChinese

YoLearnChinese — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 15:08:54 +0000

Thanks for Your comment Jay

Have You checked the full resolution picture that is linked in the text?

The picture shows an area of 280 x 460 kilometers. The pictures size is 2300 x 3800 pixels. The moon has a diameter of about 3500 kilometers. If You want to place the moon on a picture with the same resolution that would be a picture of 28000 x 28000 pixels.

At the same time it’s not really the highest resolution, just because it’s a jpeg. In the archives of the Chinese space agency they probably have the same thing in a raw picture. Would be quite a waste of bandwidth to put a 100 megabyte raw on the net.

By: jay

jay — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 14:51:08 +0000

I’m glad China is making progress but this seems kinda “been there, done that”. Frankly, photos of the moon from Earth’s telescopes seem better. Why doesn’t China do something new? Other countries did this 40 years ago.