Get dark
China has just successfully achieved its latest stronghold in the space race after landing on the dark side of the moon for the second time.
If Space.com According to reports, China’s robot lander Chang’e has successfully landed on the moon’s Apollo crater.
Notably, this is the second time a Chang’e mission – aptly named after the Chinese goddess of the moon – has landed on the side of our natural satellite that faces away from Earth. In early 2019, the fourth iteration of the program made history as the world’s first soft landing on the so-called “dark side of the moon,” the half that always faces away from Earth.
China is now trying to make history again with Chang’e 6, which will scoop up rocks from the dark side of the moon and rise again to return home. While there have been previous missions to return lunar samples, none have done so from the far side of the moon, making this effort unprecedented.
After taking off from Earth in early May and landing this weekend, the latest Chang’e rover will Reuters explains, have a short period of 14 hours to collect approximately 4.4 pounds of rock samples. Those space rocks will then be launched on a special rocket that will rendezvous with the mission’s orbiter, which is currently traveling around the moon. Shortly afterwards, the orbiter will saunter back to Earth with samples in tow.
Unsolved mysteries
Many mysteries remain about the far side of the moon. One of these is why the side facing our planet has many volcanic seas known as ‘marias’, while the other side does not.
With these samples from Chang’e 6, scientists hope to learn more about our strange satellite – and perhaps the origins of our solar system.
As James Carpenter, head of lunar sciences at the European Space Agency, explained Reuters, samples collected from the near side of the moon during the Apollo missions in the 1970s suggested that some of the craters were the result of heavy collisions with asteroids. Collecting samples from the Apollo crater on the far side of the moon will hopefully tell the other side of that story.
“This is truly a core event in the history of the entire solar system, but there is some controversy as to whether or not it occurred,” Carpenter said. “To understand that, you have to anchor those events, and that’s going to happen with samples from the far side of the moon.”
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