Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be snowy with a high of 34. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset 4:39 for 9h 15m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 4.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s city hall and schools are closed today. Play responsibly.
On this day in 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces the original iPhone at a Macworld keynote in San Francisco.
Yesterday’s post included a video of the successful launch of a private lunar lander (see US firm launches moon lander to space). Not long afterward, that mission went awry. Kenneth Chang reports American Company’s Spacecraft Malfunctions on Its Way to the Moon (‘After a flawless launch to orbit, the privately built robotic Peregrine lander is unlikely to reach the lunar surface because of a failure in its propulsion system’):
The first NASA-financed commercial mission to send a robotic spacecraft to the surface of the moon will most likely not be able to make it there.
The lunar lander, named Peregrine and built by Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh, encountered problems shortly after it lifted off early Monday morning from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The launch of the rocket, a brand-new design named Vulcan, was flawless, successfully sending Peregrine on its journey.
But a failure in the lander’s propulsion system depleted its propellant and most likely ended the mission’s original lunar ambitions.
“The team is working to try and stabilize the loss, but given the situation, we have prioritized maximizing the science and data we can capture,” Astrobotic said in a statement. “We are currently assessing what alternative mission profiles may be feasible at this time.”
And there we are: awry comes at you fast. Foresight allows the avoidance of many problems, yet not all. For the unavoidable remainder, it’s “what alternative mission profiles may be feasible at this time.”
Whitewater, historically, has never been adept at either foresight or alternative missions.
We can do much better.
South Korea passes bill to ban dog meat industry: