China has surpassed Russia and the USA
“The Chinese lunar rover Chang’e-4 made a soft landing on the far side of the Moon,” all news agencies on the planet reported on January 3, citing the central Chinese media. This is not the first landing on a satellite planet of a mobile automatic station, but the event is still unique: before “Jade Hare - 4”, not a single Earth research vehicle had ever landed on a surface invisible from the Earth.
Photo of the reverse side of the Earth satellite from the Chinese lunar rover
Let us recall that for the first time humanity saw the far side of the Moon almost 60 years ago, on October 7, 1959, thanks to photographs transmitted to Earth by the Soviet automatic interplanetary station Luna-3. This unprecedented scientific feat of our Motherland at the dawn of the space age was immortalized in the names of lunar craters. You can say, “The Other Side of the Moon is Ours”: the craters on its surface bear the names of outstanding Russian and Soviet scientists and scientists: Tsiolkovsky, Korolev, Gagarin, Obruchev, Kurchatov, Zhukovsky, Mendeleev, Timiryazev, Lyapunov, Kruzenshtern... with a total number of at least a hundred.
Luna 3, the first to show humanity the dark side of the Moon
The last time, before the “Jade Hares,” humanity touched the surface of the Moon more than 40 years ago, back in 1976. The last spacecraft to visit our queen of the nights was the Soviet spacecraft Luna-24, which delivered samples of lunar soil to Earth.
Chang'e-4 made its way to the near Moon in almost a month: the device launched from the Sichan Cosmodrome on December 8 last year. The flight itself took only 112 hours, and the rest of the time the station was in lunar orbit, waiting for the beginning of the lunar day on the far side. This will allow the on-board systems of the lunar rover to be powered from solar panels for 10 Earth days.
The “Jade Hare” landed on the Moon in a very interesting and long-attracting area of the Moon for scientists - in the Pocket crater, in the South Pole-Aitken basin, the largest impact crater in the entire Solar System. According to spectrometer readings, in this place geological rocks of the upper mantle emerge, which are currently impossible to reach under terrestrial conditions. And, since the Earth and the Moon were formed from one clump of cosmic matter, the study of these rocks can shed light on the origin of both the Moon and the Earth.
The South Pole-Aitken basin, where the lunar rover landed, is highlighted in blue.
For scientists, this is all the more important because the previous Chinese self-propelled vehicle, Yutu, which arrived on the Moon in 2013, did not give anything new to science, but was rather a “test of the pen” before the launch of Chen’e-4.
The Chinese automatic station consists of the lunar rover itself, a block of rocket engines and a landing platform with a total weight of almost two tons. The “Jade Hare” itself turned out to be quite plump, weighing 140 kilos.
In addition to optical cameras (panoramic, landscape and infrared), the Chinese lunar rover is packed with scientific equipment: ground penetrating radar, infrared spectrometer, radiation and neutron radiation sensors.
But there is also something new. Chinese scientists intend to conduct a series of biological experiments on the far side of the Moon to create a closed ecosystem in the spacecraft. For this purpose, potato seeds, Tal's rhizomes (cabbage) and silkworm cocoons are placed in a special container. As planned, plants should absorb carbon dioxide released by silkworm larvae and convert it into oxygen.
Currently, the Chen'e-4 lunar rover has not yet left the landing platform. Most likely, its systems are thoroughly tested. One of the two photographs published by Chinese media is a computer reconstruction of the rover on the lunar surface, while the other, the real one, shows a snapshot of the far side of the lunar surface, which has the same brown tint as seen from Earth.
The Jade Hare mission is also interesting because the device’s radio signals from the far side of the Moon cannot reach Earth directly.
For this purpose, the Chinese launched the Queqiao (Magpie Bridge) relay station back in May, which reached a halo orbit near the Lagrange equilibrium point L2, located 65 thousand km above the far side of the Moon, from where the Earth is visible. Moreover, the functions of “Queqiao” are not limited to the role of a simple repeater. This satellite is equipped with Chinese-Dutch equipment that records low-frequency radiation from the early Universe, making it possible to study its structure.
Actually, the landing of the “Jade Hare” on the far side of the Moon itself would have been impossible without previous Soviet and American exploration of the Moon, as well as without the help of foreign partners of the Chinese National Space Administration.
In particular, RAS scientists helped their Chinese colleagues, who had no experience in lunar exploration, with engineering modeling of the surface and lunar soil. Some instruments on Chinese lunar rovers were designed jointly with Russian specialists, and the radioisotope generator capable of heating and supplying Chang'e-4 with electricity on a long moonlit night is 100% Russian. Critical component.
Happy to realize that humanity is once again beginning to turn its face to the stars, we have to admit with great regret that the Chinese with their Chang'e-4 have leapfrogged the pioneers of space research, Russia and the United States. But both countries have long been gathering dust on the shelf with projects to send research vehicles to the dark side of the Moon. And not just, but right in the promising area of the South Pole - Aitken.
And if you can be calm about the Americans - their NASA is traditionally headed by competent people who are aware of the responsibility entrusted to them, then the future of domestic space research does not look so rosy as long as Roscosmos is led by yesterday's journalists who are capable of wasting a trillion rubles a year for who knows what.
English version :: Read in English: China has overtaken Russia and the United States.