Chang’e-4 sets controls for dark side of the moon
Print Edition
CHINA aims to land a probe on the far side of the moon in 2018, the China National Space Administration said yesterday.
Scientists plan to launch a relay satellite for the Chang’e-4 mission in late May or early June of that year, and then aim to set the lunar lander and rover down on the Aitken Basin of the south pole region about six months later, said Liu Tongjie, deputy director of the administration’s Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center.
“We plan to land Chang’e-4 at the Aitken Basin because the region is believed to be a place with great scientific research potential,” Liu said.
With its special environment and complex geological history, the far side of the moon is a hot spot for scientific and space exploration.
However, landing and roving there requires a relay satellite to transmit signals back to Earth, Liu said.
The transmission channel is limited, and the landscape is rugged, so the Chang’e-4 mission will be more complicated than Chang’e-3, China’s first soft landing mission to the moon, which was completed in 2013, Liu said.
The Chang’e-4 lander will be equipped with descent and terrain cameras, and the rover will be equipped with a panoramic camera, he said.
Like China’s first lunar rover Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, carried by Chang’e-3, Chang’e-4’s rover will carry subsurface penetrating radar to detect the near surface structure of the moon, and an infrared spectrometer to analyze the chemical composition of lunar samples.
Unlike Chang’e-3, the new lander will be equipped with an important scientific payload specially designed for the far side of the moon — a low-frequency radio spectrometer.
“Since the far side of the moon is shielded from electromagnetic interference from Earth, it’s an ideal place to research the space environment and solar bursts, and the probe can ‘listen’ to the deeper reaches of the cosmos,” Liu said.
The Chang’e-4 probe will also carry scientific payloads developed separately by the Netherlands, Sweden and Germany, Liu said.
“The cooperation will help engineers and scientists from different countries study together. Scientists could conduct joint research and share scientific data,” he said
Chinese and Dutch low-frequency radio spectrometers could help to explain how the cosmos emerged from darkness after the Big Bang, said Chen Xuelei, an astronomer with the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The rover will also carry an advanced small analyzer, developed in Sweden, to study the interaction between solar winds and the lunar surface.
And a neutron dosimeter, developed in Germany, will be installed on the lander to measure radiation at the landing site.
Scientists say it is essential to investigate the radiation environment on the lunar surface in preparation for manned missions.
China’s young people having been playing a role in the mission. A contest launched at the beginning of the year has been collecting ideas about what to include in the payloads on the lander, rover and relay satellite.
“The contest is based on creativity, but engineering feasibility has to be considered,” Liu said.
“We’ll try to select one or two items eventually to take to the moon,” he added.
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