The shadow space race for the Moon keeps unabated, with multiple countries sending probes and spaceships to Earth’s satellite, signaling a spike in interest on the economic exploration of the seemingly vast Lunar resources.
It now surfaces that China’s Chang’e 6 probe has returned to Earth today (25), carrying with it rock and soil samples from the virtually-unknown far side of the moon.
The probe landed safely back in the Mongolia region of China.
Associated Press reported:
“While past U.S. and Soviet missions have collected samples from the moon’s near side, the Chinese mission was the first to collect samples from the far side.
Chinese scientists anticipate the samples will include 2.5-million-year-old volcanic rock and other material that scientists hope will answer questions about differences between the moon’s two sides.”
Read: The Moon Economic Wars: Russia and China Plan a Nuclear Plant to Power Future Lunar Base
The Moon side we get to see every night here from Planet Earth is called the ‘near side’ – and it so happens that the moon orbits us in a way in which this same side is always facing us.
The far side is always facing outer space.
“Missions to the far side are challenging and risky because mission controllers on Earth have no way of directly contacting a spacecraft in that region.
Instead, they must send signals through a satellite that orbits the moon — a Chinese satellite has been in lunar orbit since March, and it relayed information to the spacecraft on the lunar surface.”
The 53 days of the Chang’e 6 mission may fill the blanks of the mystery of the Dark Side of the Moon.
“Scientists have long been fascinated by the parts of the moon that permanently face away from our planet. The far side is known to have mountains and impact craters, contrasting with the relatively flat expanses visible on the near side. As such, samples from the far side could provide evidence of previously unstudied geological eras in the moon’s history, which could help researchers piece together how the solar system formed.”
What geologic activity is responsible for the differences between the two sides? This and many other questions will be addressed.
And they will yield geological data that you can bet will have economical repercussions.
The rapidly expanding Chinese Space Program did its first Lunar landing in 2013, and works towards a landing of Chinese astronauts on the moon surface by 2030.
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