June 2 (UPI) — After a month-long journey, a Chinese spacecraft has landed on the far side of the moon, the China National Space Administration said.
Chinese Space Administration officials have said they intend to collect rock and soil from this inaccessible area of the lunar surface for the first time in history. The CNSA said,
“Everyone is very excited that we’ll be able to see rocks that no one has ever seen before,” said Professor John Pernett-Fisher, an expert in lunar geology at the University of Manchester. told the BBC,
Applause erupted at the Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Center when the Chang’e landing craft touched down on the moon on Sunday morning. The Chinese state broadcaster said,
Chinese space scientists landed the Chang’e 6 spacecraft in a crater called the Apollo Basin. “The selection was made for the potential value of the Apollo Basin for scientific exploration, as well as the landing area conditions, including communication and telemetry conditions and the flatness of the terrain,” said Huang Hao, a space expert at the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
The rugged terrain on the far side of the moon makes it more difficult to navigate than the front or near side, and there are fewer flat surfaces conducive to a successful landing, Huang said. This also reduces the windows for communicating with unmanned spacecraft.
The spacecraft hovered about 300 feet above the lunar surface and scanned it using 3D technology before landing. Chinese space officials described the landing as a “historic moment.”
Chang’e 6 will now begin a three-day exploration of the lunar surface, collecting materials as part of a mission that the CNSA said would involve “many engineering innovations, high risks and great difficulty”.
Most prominently, Chang’e 6 will attempt to extract some of the oldest known rocks from the Moon’s south pole.
The chance to analyze rocks and other objects from a completely different part of the moon could answer fundamental questions about how planets form, Pernet-Fisher said.
Most of the rocks collected so far are volcanic, the kind that might be found in Iceland or Hawaii, he said. But the chemistry of the material on the far side will be different.
“This will help us answer big questions like how planets form, why crust forms on the Earth’s surface, where did water in the solar system originate?” Pernet-Fischer said.
China is the only country to have landed its module on the far side of the Moon, doing so for the first time with its Chang’e 4 spacecraft in 2019.
