back to article Chinese spacecraft JUUUUST avoids smashing into Toutatis

Chinese probe Chang'e-2 has successfully flown by Toutatis, an asteroid named for the Celtic deity often invoked by cartoon characters Asterix and Obelix. 4179 Toutatis, to give the object its full name, has an orbit that brings it very close to Earth's, before swinging out into Jupiter's neighbourhood. Last week that orbit …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Esskay
    Joke

    A rather unfortunate shape

    If I saw an asteroid heading for earth that looked like that, I'd find it somewhat hard to take it seriously...

    1. peyton?
      Happy

      Re: A rather unfortunate shape

      snicker. Hate to admit it, but it did make me think of Black Adder's puritanical aunt, and a turnip.

  2. BeholdersEye

    Morels

    looks like a model mushroom to me....

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    Reminds me of Yosamatie Sam

    Whoooooaaaaaaaaaaa close it, close it, close it......

    Whoaaaaaaaaaaa, open it, open it, open it.....

    Pity they didn't nuke it - the nasty space rock that is.

    One day, it's probably going to cause a big problem.

    1. Psyx
      Devil

      Re: Reminds me of Yosamatie Sam

      "Pity they didn't nuke it - One day, it's probably going to cause a big problem."

      Nuke everything that might be a problem?

      But this was a Chinese mission, not an American one!

    2. James Micallef Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: One day, it's probably going to cause a big problem.

      By Toutatis, the sky is falling on our heads!!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Nuking?

      Funny guys those Romans, errrr, Americans....

      1. Stoneshop

        Re: Nuking?

        That's 'These Romans Americans are crazy!' for the English-speaking parts of the world

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Micro gravitation changes?

    Does such a close encounter have any gravitational affect on the asteroids orbital path?

    Might it now be on a collision course with us in another 5,000 years?

    Asking for a time traveling friend.

    1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

      Re: Micro gravitation changes?

      Asking for a time traveling friend.

      Why don't you ask your time traveling friend to just pop 5,000 years into the future and find out ?

      1. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
        Alien

        Re: Micro gravitation changes?

        Careful what you ask for, you may get it... Asking for a time traveling friend.

        Dey turk er jurbs!

    2. Annihilator
      Boffin

      Re: Micro gravitation changes?

      "Does such a close encounter have any gravitational affect on the asteroids orbital path?"

      Yes, a very very very (...etc...) slight one. In the same way any craft does when using gravity assisted accelerations or deccelerations.

      "Might it now be on a collision course with us in another 5,000 years?"

      It might, but then again it may have nudged it off a collision course. Our ability to calculate orbital paths of small objects isn't as accurate as that.

    3. Tom_

      Re: Micro gravitation changes?

      "Does such a close encounter have any gravitational affect on the asteroids orbital path?

      Might it now be on a collision course with us in another 5,000 years?"

      Lucily, launching the probe from Earth on a one way mission means the Chinese have also adjusted the orbit of the Earth and it's possible they've done so in such a way that they have prevented a future collision.

      1. BoldMan

        Re: Micro gravitation changes?

        I'm a time traveller so I'll let you know when I get there - it will sadly take 5000 years as I'm travelling into the future at one second every second which means it'll take me... um... 5000 years.

        1. BorkedAgain
          Thumb Up

          Re: Micro gravitation changes?

          @ BoldMan - Is that the fastest you can go? I'm travelling at an average rate of 60 minutes per hour, although some afternoons it seems considerably slower...

    4. mr.K
      Mushroom

      Re: Micro gravitation changes?

      If you have a lottery where the winner number is only revealed if you win. And suppose you decide on a number and then a friend comes along and says you should add one to that number. There are two outcomes, either you win, or you do not. If you do not it is still highly unlikely that you would have won on your original number and you will never know, but if you do win you know it is because you added one.

      Back to China, if it does hit us at some point we know it is their fault. If we avoided disaster because of it (it nudged it just out of course), we will never know. So....like...blame Canada! (Sorry, it is my goto blame-country)

  5. Mark Simon
    Pint

    Punctuation

    Shouldn’t the title be:

    Chinese Spacecraft Zips, by Toutatis!

  6. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Pint

    Go Chinese!

    Excellent work by the Chinese space programme. Great to see multiple space programmes of the ground (sorry, couldn't resist). Maybe a bit of competition will sting people into more action

    I'll raise a glass of Sinkiang black beer to that, by Toutatis!

    1. Crisp
      Happy

      Re: Go Chinese!

      It's a whole new space race :D

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Thumb Up

        Re: Go Chinese!

        Quite so.

        This further reinforces my belief that when we do eventually put a man on Mars (or even revisit the Moon) they probably won't be Russian or American.

    2. Keith 72

      Re: Go Chinese!

      It would be brilliant if there were more international co-operation evident. NASA recently released (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/news/asteroid20121214.html) a radar video of Toutatis tumbilng through space how much cooler would have been if it could have shown Chang'e-2 whizzing about too, although I guess scale might be an issue.

      1. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
        Megaphone

        Re: Go Chinese!

        It would be brilliant if there were more international co-operation evident

        No, no, no! The last thing you want is more international co-operation, look how much human advancement there has been due to competition.

        Did america go to the moon for the betterment of humanity, No, they went to the moon to get there before the Russians, will the america go back to the moon for science, maybe; will america go back to the moon if the Chinese establish a base on the moon, you can bet your bottom dollar they will.

        A red Mars, no way, it's going to be a red, white and blue Mars.

      2. mhenriday
        Boffin

        Re: Go Chinese!

        Have to agree that more international cooperation is needed in human space endeavours. Getting to and returning from Luna, at a mean distance of some 384 400 km from Earth, was one thing, but getting humans to and returning them from Mars, with a distance from Earth at close approach which ranges from 54 to 103 million km, and other small obstacles (think radiation, etc) on the way is an entirely different matter entirely. But alas, so long as troglodytes like US Representative Frank Rudolph Wolf are allowed to render it impossible for NASA to cooperate in any form with its Chinese counterpart, such cooperation will have to wait....

        Henri

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Go Chinese!

      Chinese looking for places to send their excess population.

    4. ian 22

      Re: Go Chinese!

      It appears Elon Musk has a bit competition.

      Go Elon!

      NASA? Nah, they're skint.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sinister

    Is it just me, or does Toutatis' irregular shape make it "feel" more dangerous? As a boy I always imagined asteroids as perfect spheres - mini-planets - probably because they always looked that way in books (or The Beano). There's something about Toutatis' complete lack of symmetry that brings home that it isn't any kind of "celestial" body, just a huge tumbling mass of rock. And that in turn leads to the thought that it probably doesn't have any neat, tidy destiny: it might go on orbiting for millions of years; on the other hand, it could just as well hit the Earth and cause hideous disaster.

    1. Filippo Silver badge

      Re: Sinister

      Shape has nothing to do with path. Actually, the irregular shape tells me that it's not massive enough to collapse into a sphere, which is a little bit reassuring when thinking about collisions. I'd be much more worried if anything big enough to be a sphere were to hit Earth.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sinister

        It's not the shape that would worry me but the speed it would be moving relative the earth at impact...

  8. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    Very nice but...

    Why do these Chinese Explanatory Posters look like something one might find as inlay on a typical ripped DVD in a market stall in Shanghai?

    1. pixl97

      Re: Very nice but...

      What do you think that artist does for a day job. It's a good long time between events in space and he has to feed his family.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Causing a stir....... fry....

    I see the real reason for their pictures....

    Headline

    Chinese food producer interested in large root of ginger asteroid aims to corner market in stir fries.

  10. Arachnoid
    Thumb Up

    A vertibale space potato ergo when they get too close they become a hot potato !

  11. Pastafarian

    Is it just me?

    Or does that asteroid look like one of those giant heads on Easter Island.

    OK. It IS just me.

    1. ArmanX

      Re: Is it just me?

      It looks like a potato to me... bomb it with some oil, pass it close to the sun, and BAM, lunch!

  12. Blitterbug
    Happy

    Very very cool.

    Wouldn't it be great if NASA were allowed to sent them some official congrats? I'm sure they would want to...

    1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

      Re: Very very cool.

      I would not be surprised if they have.

  13. Andus McCoatover
    Windows

    <blackadderrmode> "It looks like a thingy! </blackadderrmode>

    1. Psyx
      Pint

      Really? Looks more like a turnip to me...

  14. Kevin Johnston

    Mmmmm Chinese fly-by's

    problem is that half an hour later you want another one

    1. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart

      Re: Mmmmm Chinese fly-by's

      problem is that half an hour later you want another one

      No, it's the McFlyBy that has that effect.

  15. Dave Bell

    Nice Work

    That all looks like a fine piece of work by the Chinese.

    I would wonder if they have the sort of deep-space tracking and communications network that NASA has. That may be a bigger problem than the engineering of the spacecraft needed for an interplanetary mission. Sometimes you have to look past the obvious shiny.

  16. Smallbrainfield
    Coat

    Potato!

    The post is required, and must contain letters.

  17. Tom 7

    Keep an eye out for a f'off chisel

    that looks ominously like a stone masons mallet to me!

    And can I have 2 47's and some egg fried rice to ceres and hold the prawn crackers

    to stop them floating away again!

  18. Jon Green
    Boffin

    More than one picture?

    I can't see any evidence that we're not looking at a single picture, with different scalings. As the spacecraft passes, I would expect to see previously-occulted features exposed, and previously-visible features fall behind the viewline. The fact that every picture in that series appears to show _exactly_ the same face ... well, the only way to achieve that is to fly the spacecraft directly at the middle of it, and even then you'd expect to see some edge features disappear as it got close, and some parallax effects.

    So I call: "One photo only, and a bit of Photoshopping." Anyone see evidence otherwise?

  19. Wombling_Free
    Boffin

    Photoshop in Spaaaaace!

    I agree with Jon, this looks like a case of 'we got one picture, lets photoshop so it looks like we did a flyby'.

    I seem to recall that most asteroids rotate pretty quickly on account of them being pretty small. Also if you pass by that close, your photographic angle should change, and you should see the asteroid appear to revolve. Toutatis, by Toutatis, appears to scale and translate instead of rotate - hence in my totally unprofessional view as an El Reg Comentard it is photoshopped.

    Let's hope they haven't been reading 'Titan' by Stephen Baxter, or we are all in for a really nasty 2013.

    1. Eddie Edwards
      Boffin

      Re: Photoshop in Spaaaaace!

      A quick Google shows the asteroid has a rotation period of 5-7 days, so it would not have rotated significantly during the flyby.

      This isn't like those sedate fly-bys of Jupiter and Saturn. Wikipedia says the approach was taken at 10km/s relative velocity with a closest distance of 3km. The asteroid is 4km long. If you scale that to human units it's like driving past a house by the side of the road at 60mph, and trying to get a clear picture of the front. (If you scale to Voyager units it's like flying past Jupiter at 1/2 the speed of light!)

      They did have quite a good camera on board though, so possibly it was the problem of rotating it fast enough to track an object at that speed. Maybe the camera mount doesn't rotate at all, only the craft. Lots of issues to solve to get that picture.

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: Photoshop in Spaaaaace!

        Could also be that it's actually a fleet of seven Toutatises poised to attack earth like interplanetary giganto-turds!

  20. MrXavia
    Thumb Up

    Nice one!

    glad to see a probe being used for multiple purposes not just one target!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Appreciate the visit.

      Thumbs up from Toatatis, by the look of it.

  21. NogginTheNog
    Happy

    Chang'e-2

    Does anyone else see a resemblance to the cheese-eating robo-appliance Wallace and Gromit met on the moon in A Grand Day Out?!

  22. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

    Toutatis?

    Looks more like Potatis to me...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Toutatis?

      Or Two-tatties?

  23. tomban
    Joke

    THIS LOOKS SHOPPED

    I CAN TELL FROM SOME OF THE PIXELS AND FROM SEEING QUITE A FEW SHOPS IN MY TIME.

    http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/120/117/Shoppp.jpg

  24. mhenriday
    Boffin

    «Sharp-eyed Reg readers may, however, be wondering

    why Weiren, whose title relates to lunar exploration, is talking about asteroid encounters.» Sharp-eyed Reg readers, Simon, may indeed be wondering why a well-read person like yourself is unaware that the surname of the «chief designer of China's lunar probe program» is Wu. Weiren is his given name....

    Henri

  25. Stevie

    Bah!

    The Chinese appear to have closed the gap in the faked space picture technology race.

    We should demand a convincing fake Mars landing by 2015 with a guarantee of a fake safe return from our politicians. Also, we should fake a probe to debunk the fake Russian rover.

    It's like our own fake photo labs just gave up.

  26. larokus
    Happy

    Deep

    Penetrating asteroid

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    did they announce a target before getting there?

    Did the Chinese announce they were targetting this asteroid beforehand or was this a chance encounter? As it's been said, "the secret is to shoot first, then call what you hit your target"

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: did they announce a target before getting there?

      This was months in the making as any google search would tell you.

      Plus, I mean, think about this logically.... what are the odds of ACCIDENTALLY meeting up with a 3 mile wide asteroid... 4.3 million miles away from Earth?

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What's up with this "JUUUUST AVOIDS SMASHING INTO TOUTATIS" crap?

    What's up with this "JUUUUST AVOIDS SMASHING INTO TOUTATIS" crap?

    You might as well say that every NASA launch ever JUUUUUST AVOIDED EXPLODING INTO A MILLION BITS AFTER LAUNCH. China's space agency spent months planning this and deserves credit for an amazing accomplishment. Not cheap, chauvinistic jabs that not only fail to recognize China's progress but makes whichever country the author hails from look like they're over compensating for something...

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like