Completing 50 years since the man stepped his foot on the Moon, China became the first state to land a spacecraft on the remote side of the Moon.
According to China Global Television Network America, on 2 January, a Chinese spacecraft launched from China in early December and carrying a rover on it, landed in a crater on the Moon side that is always off the Earth. Landing marks a major technological breakthrough for the country and places China on elite space-level countries.
The successful landing on the moon was one of a series of planned missions, codenamed Chang'e-4 mission, aimed at exploring the surfaceof the Moon. Before this program, China had sent a spacecraft with a rover to the bright side of the Moon, making a third country soft landing on its surface.
This effort was not something simple and no one had succeeded until now, because it is difficult to communicate with them robot on the side of the Moon that we cannot see. Without direct line of sight to Earth, there is no simple way to receive radio signals from spacecraft in dark side of the moon. And to put it bluntly, it's not the dark one, since the sun sees it, it's just not visible from Earth. So the term "remote" is more appropriate.
China managed to make the communication using a lunar satellite launched in May, and acts as a mediator between the spacecraft and the Earth.
The landing on the Moon took place in a crater on the south side, which you call Aitken. This is an area of the lunar surface that many scientists want to explore. The crater, which is about 1.550 miles wide, is thought to be a very old crater, created when a huge rock slammed into the Moon billions of years ago.millions years. Estimating the exact age of the basin created by the impact could help us learn more about when this event occurred, providing clues about what the Solar System's environment was like.
Chang'e-4 may not be able to estimate the exact age of the South Pole-Aitken Basin, but it is equipped with several scientific instruments that will tell us more about this mysterious part of the Moon. The spacecraft will soon deploy its rover, which will learn more about the composition and structure of the rocks in this area. For now it will focus on the sky, gathering data for astronomers here on Earth, eager to take advantage of the spacecraft's unique location on the far side of the Moon. At night, when the Moon shields this region from both the Sun and radio signals from Earth, the spacecraft should have an unparalleled view of the stars.
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