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
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    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
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        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
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            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.