China Launched a Lunar Satellite to Land on the Far Side of the Moon: The Case of the South Pole-Aitken Basin

The Moon blocks radio signals in the area on the far side, making landing Chang’e 6 difficult. China launched two lunar satellites in the past to allow for communication between Earth and rovers on the far side of the Moon.

It will help scientists understand the terrain of the far side of the Moon and possibly shed light on the early history of the Moon and Earth. It is a huge milestone in the space race to establish a presence on the Moon.

President Xi Jinping congratulated the China National Space Administration, calling it a “landmark achievement in our country’s efforts at becoming a space and technological power,” according to The Associated Press.

The impact crater of the South Pole–Aitken Basin was formed 4.26 billion years ago. The far side of the Moon has craters from ancient crashes compared to the smooth near side. What materials are in these craters is an important question forFiguring out the Moon’s history.

It has implications for understanding life on Earth because of a theory about asteroids carrying water and material from other planets to Earth in the late Heavy Bombardment. The bombardment has received more scrutiny lately. Some questions could be answered with samples from the far side of the Moon.

China plans to send its Chang’e 7 spacecraft to the Moon’s south pole in 2026 to search for water and other resources that could potentially support long-term missions on the Moon. In the year 2026, NASA hopes to send the first humans to the lunar south pole region.

International researchers are hoping to work on Chang’e-6 samples, too. There is a University of California, Davis professor that wants to use them to figure out when the lunar magma ocean will end and when it will begin.

At about 1:20 p.m. Beijing time on Tuesday, the landing procedure kicked off. The capsule ran off the ground and went down at an altitude of less than a kilometer a second. The decent had a parachute deployed to assist him. The capsule was located by a recovery team. Once they have processed the capsule on site, it will be transported to Beijing, where it will be opened and the samples removed for scientific analysis and storage, says CNSA.

The mission was watched by Patrick Pinet from a control room in Beijing. “I’ve seen an incredible technical efficiency and professional mastering of all these very complex steps along the way,” he says.

“China’s ability to carry out highly complex missions at lunar distance is robust,” says Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He says control of a craft to take off and rendezvous will be important for a human lunar mission in the near future.

More than 200 scientists from Chinese universities met in Beijing to discuss scientific questions they hope to address by analyzing Chang’e 6 samples. Participants voted for three problems they considered the most important. The question is why the two faces are different, then what the composition of deeper lunar structures is, and finally when the SPA basin formed.

The moon had negative strontium for the first time. Studying these particles will help scientists to understand the lunar surface environment and design robotic and crewed missions in the future. Neil Melville is the project manager for the NILS project and he says a lot of work needs to be done.

Pierre-Yves Meslin’s team recorded 19 hours of good-quality data on the surface operations. “We are now working on the calibration and analysis of the scientific data, but we can already tell that the performance of the instrument has been met,” he says. The Chinese and French members of DORN had a very successful teamwork, and we received support from Beijing and the China National Space Administration. We felt a part of the mission.

The China lunar mission and its aim to establish the first permanent lunar presence on the Moon, according to a university research fellow at Arizona State University

According to a space policy researcher at Arizona State University, the three lunar missions are part of China’s larger lunar programme to establish a moon base by the mid-2030s. “The ability of China to execute their space missions on time means it will realistically establish the first ever permanent presence on the Moon,” she says.