China plans Nuclear powered 'Spirit' on the Moon... Options

[gndonald]

...and the Lunokhods are forgotten again....

At least in this report on The Register an IT industry publication.

Not so sure about the cut of the authors jib in relation to the proposed power supply either...

[helvick]

It's about par for El Reg when it wanders away from it's core area of competence. It's mostly a rumour mag too so no-one really takes it all that seriously.

[helvick]

There's slightly more detail and less nuke paranoia on the BBC. If I had just seen the picture in isolation I would have assumed it was a MER modified for Lunar ops - there are some striking similarities especially when you consider just how completely different the Lunokhod solution for the same task was.

[edstrick]

Basically, they're using an insulated rectangular box (3/4 of sats do that, now) on a MER derived set of wheels, together with a MER type arm. The "guts" will be entirely different, but why not use a field-tested general design?

Lunokhod was one of the strangest looking vehicles ever launched into space, but they worked remarkably well, though the science return was somewhat less than rudimentary.

[djellison]

Look a hell of a lot like Exomars if you ask me

[GravityWaves]

I don't get all the conflicting reports on this one

China to nuke the Moon some time before 2012 !?




but seriously I'm glad people are starting to back more lunar exploration, with all these space agency's desiring more moon/mars exploration it looks like the next few decades could get interesting indeed