Even if it landed correctly, why would they plan a solar powered mission to the moon when our next lunar eclipse is in like 5 days?
Even if it landed correctly, why would they plan a solar powered mission to the moon when our next lunar eclipse is in like 5 days?
How would a secondary power source save it from being tipped over? That’s a mission ending failure no matter how many redundant power sources you have.
Being tipped over doesn’t inherently stop all of its equipment from working, I’m sure at least some of the sensors could otherwise still work, if they had power.
Even if only 10% of the sensors and equipment could still work, 10% would still be better than 0%.
True, but communication could still be a problem.
Generally this kind of probe will have a highly directional antenna that has pretty strict limits on it’s aim. We would have to be very lucky for the antenna to not get damaged during the fall and end up in a position where it can still establish a connection. Even if all the science is fine, it’s as good as useless if it can’t communicate any results or accept commands.
Ah, but it did send data back before the battery ran down, at least enough data to confirm it fell over when it landed.