This time the dragon jumped over the moon.
China has landed the fourth in a series of lunar explorers named Chang’e on the far side of the moon. The name is for the Chang’e, the mythological goddess of the moon. The far side, also know has the dark side, has been relatively unexplored. This is the first soft landing on the dark side of the moon, and it includes the rover, Yutu, (“jade rabbit”) to explore the surface which for nearly all of human history has been hidden from view.
The first three missions of China’s lunar exploration tested their ability to attain orbit and achieve a soft landing on the moon. An additional mission placed the satellite Queqiao (magpie Bridge) (That beautiful story will deserve an article of its own.) at LaGrange point L2 to enable communications with Chang’e 4 and the lunar rover.
Lunar Incognita has become Lunar Sciamus, the moon that we know. This is a very rudimentary translation. This rough translation is in the plural tense because it is all of humanity that will be able to know the moon and to understand its formation and its promise. The landing site of Chang’e 4 is a large plain known as the Von Karman crater which is located within the South Pole Aitken (SPA) Basin. The rover will study the surface of the far side which is thought to be significantly different from the surface of the near side, the side that can be seen from the Earth. According to a BBC article on the mission and landing, the SPA crater is one of the largest known impact craters in the solar system and the largest on the moon. The Chinese science team wants to study the massive sheet of melted rock that filled the crater.
In 1969 when astronauts first stepped on the moon, we memorialized the event. There was a plaque attached to the lunar lander descent stage that was left on the moon. It reads “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. We came in Peace for all mankind.”
And now what was hidden is being revealed. And the hope is that all of humanity will benefit from what is discovered. Is it worldly riches? Perhaps, it will likely become a stepping stone to creating a forward location – like a base camp at the foot of Everest – for humanity’s new stage of exploration of our solar system and beyond.
China has made a great leap in helping humanity establish this wider presence. The lunar rover rolled off the lander two days after Chang’e 4 had successfully reached the moon’s surface. Future planned missions will collect and return samples of the moon’s surface.
This success is part of a broader achievement that continues to look forward into the future. Wu Weiren, chief designer of China’s lunar exploration program is quoted in China’s news agency as saying, “We (humanity) have a responsibility to explore and understand [the moon]. Exploration of the moon will also deepen our understanding of Earth and ourselves.”
There is, perhaps, a future of people living and working and spending their lives on the moon or on other planets and moons of the solar system. Each of them will have a role in bringing a bright and strong future to all of humanity.
Our highest congratulations to our friends in China for an extraordinary achievement.
Information in this article is based on:
China News Agency article by Xinhua writers Yu Fei, Quan Xiaoshu, and Xie Jiao,
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-01/03/c_137717597.htm
and BBC article by Paul Ricon