Japanese HDTV Footage of the Moon

• November 8th, 2007 | HDTV

Now here’s some irony for you–after all of the amazing “firsts” the United States’ space program has achieved in decades past, it is the Japanese space program that managed to shoot the first High Definition Television footage of the moon taken from space. They were able to get the footage using an HDTV camera aboard their Selenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE) probe named “Kaguya.” Kaguya is the first man-made object to shoot HD footage so close to the moon–just 100km (approximately 62 miles) from the surface of the moon, making this a fairly historic event.

Of course, the real irony here is that with so many science fiction films featuring such amazing graphics, the footage is really quite unimpressive. Perhaps it’s that the Japanese space program’s website hasn’t made the full-resolution HD footage available for download and the online version looks kind of, well, fake. It’s not that they actually faked it–it’s just that it doesn’t look all that impressive. Have a look at their HDTV moon footage for yourself and see what you think. It is a little puzzling as to why they don’t have the actual high resolution HD footage available for us to watch on our own machines–sure, the file size would be huge, but hey, we’re all down with a slow download. Remember when we all used to refer to the World Wide Web as the World Wide Wait?

The other thing that is amusing about this story is kind of mean to point out. The Japanese have a space program?? Are their spaceships smaller, more tightly designed crafts compared to the American space shuttle? Do their rockets fly with giant “Hello Kitty” logos on them? Ah and the biggest question is this: do the astronauts have to take off their shoes before entering the spaceship? Sorry, in an era where NASA expects us to get excited about going to the moon in 2018 it’s hard to take smaller countries’ efforts in space seriously…

[Jaxa.jp]