for the first time in history a space
mission has touched down on the far side
of the Moon
China's cheongha 4 probe landed in the
oldest and deepest Basin on the moon's
surface making the mission a milestone
for both China and space exploration as
a whole this isn't the first time China
has landed on the moon in 2013
Zhang a3 successfully touched down on
Mari Imbrium a huge lava plain on the
moon's surface but until now China has
never explored the moon's mysterious
dark side no one has that's actually why
it's called the dark side it's not
hidden from the Sun it's hidden from our
view that's because the moon is in
what's called synchronous rotation with
the earth which means every time the
moon rotates once on its axis it also
completes one orbit around the earth as
a result we see the same face of the
moon every night in fact we only got our
first glimpse of the far side in 1959
when the Soviet Union's Luna 3 took
pictures as it flew by and while we've
had numerous landings on the near side
of the moon
no one's attempted to touch down on the
far side before and for good reason it's
impossible to communicate with anything
over there any signal would get blocked
by the rest of the moon but China's team
has a solution they launched a relay
satellite with a clear view of Bo Xiang
Yu for and the earth and so far the
plans working here are the very first
images taken by Zhang F for the first in
history ever taken from the surface on
the dark side of the moon what's more
you're looking at the oldest largest and
deepest Basin the moon has Shanga for
landed on von-karman a
flat landscape that sits inside South
Pole 8 convey s'en the basin is around
2500 kilometers across that's about the
distance from New York to Dallas and
it's a whopping 8 kilometers deep for
comparison the deepest natural point on
earth the Challenger Deep is nearly 11
kilometers deep
next the lander will release a rover
that will explore the surrounding area
one of its tasks is to study the
composition of rocks and dirt in the
basin since scientists believe this is
the oldest Basin on the moon learning
what it's made of might help us
understand how Earth's only moon formed
and evolved but that's only one goal of
the mission
besides cameras and spectrometers Shanga
four also brought along potatoes and
silkworm eggs researchers hope to test
how well plants can grow and eggs can
hatch in the moon's low gravity it's the
first mini greenhouse to ever land on
another world in our solar system and
might help prepare us for space colonies
in the future
you
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