Well, I suppose since the JAXA SLIM mission actually survived, and still managed to get data down despite their backside ending up their topside it’s actually a really good day.
“Any landing your survive is a good one.”
But, still…
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Didn’t the USA have a rover on Mars do something similar?
They slammed a probe into the surface and the root issue was one team was using imperial units and the others were using SI. IIRC, that was supposed to be a satellite probe, not a lander.
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In a very good use of an onboard camera, they acquired images of the nozzle that came off one of their two main engines. To land after losing part of an engine (it went to about 55% thrust after this) is a pretty impressive feat, even if it did end up on its side.
And the two deployable bouncing landers - a very Japanese bit of design, both were ejected and worked- the one that took the image above bounced 6 times on the surface, ended up right side up, and took that picture.
It’s also pretty impressive to be able to close the radio link despite having your bottom side end up your top side. Someone buy the telecom engineers some sake.
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Not relevant, but it won’t be the first time I hijack a perfectly good thread. You blokes triggered a memory, and a quick search turned up a copy of a 1969 poster from way before AI or photoshop or the internet, so it must be real. I reckon it was in the poster shops within a month or two of the moon landing.
