Chinese Probe Lands on the Moon

[lpetrich]

China Moon mission lands Chang'e-4 spacecraft on far side - BBC News

China says it has successfully landed a robotic spacecraft on the far side of the Moon, the first ever such attempt and landing.

At 10:26 Beijing time (02:26 GMT), the un-crewed Chang'e-4 probe touched down in the South Pole-Aitken Basin, state media said.

It is carrying instruments to analyse the unexplored region's geology, as well to conduct biological experiments.

On board the lander:

The lander also carried a container with six live species from Earth - cotton, rapeseed, potato, fruit fly, yeast and arabidopsis (a flowering plant) - to try to form a mini biosphere.

The arabidopsis plant may produce the first flower on the Moon, Chinese state media say.

Other equipment/experiments include:

• A panoramic camera
• A radar to probe beneath the lunar surface
• An imaging spectrometer to identify minerals
• An experiment to examine the interaction of the solar wind (a stream of energised particles from the Sun) with the lunar surface

I don't know if that spacecraft's terrarium has a heater to keep it warm over the lunar night. The Moon's surface temperature can get as low as -173 C at night and as high as 127 C in the daytime (What is the Temperature on the Moon?). I also don't know whether it is a window to let in sunlight during the lunar day or whether it has a light to illuminate it.

This lander does not have a direct line of sight to the Earth, for obvious reasons.

So the landers must communicate with Earth using a relay satellite named Queqiao - or Magpie Bridge - launched by China last May.

Queqiao orbits 65,000km beyond the Moon, around a Lagrange point - a kind of gravitational parking spot in space where it will remain visible to ground stations in China and other countries such as Argentina.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Given their proclivity for fakes why do we think this isn't just in a sound stage?

 

[lpetrich]

Chang'e-4 descent video - YouTube
Chang’e-4 spacecraft enter lunar nighttime, China planning future missions, cooperation - SpaceNews.com
China releases more images from far side of the moon – Spaceflight Now
China's moon lander sprouted a plant, but now it's dead - CNET -- killed by the cold lunar night.

A team from Chongqing University in China developed a sealed biosphere habitat stocked with seeds, fruit fly eggs and yeast that it hoped would create a mini-ecosystem. The cotton seed was the only one to sprout. The experiment also contained potato and oilseed rape seeds.

...
The seeds, flies and yeast were selected for their ability to withstand low gravity, strong radiation and wide temperature swings on the moon.

The experiment's chief designer, Xie Gengxin of Chongqing University, told Xinhua that life inside the canister would not survive the lander's first lunar night, which started on Sunday. The moon's nighttime period lasts for about two Earth weeks.

...
The space agency is already looking ahead to its next lunar mission, Chang'e 5, which is designed to collect lunar samples and bring them back to Earth. It's also exploring options for a crewed moon mission.