China on Tuesday unveiled plans to send a lunar probe called Chang’e-4 to land along with a rover in the unexplored south pole region of the far side of the moon in 2018.
China on Tuesday unveiled plans to send a lunar probe called Chang’e-4 to land along with a rover in the unexplored south pole region of the far side of the moon in 2018.
A relay satellite for Chang’e-4 to the halo orbit of the Earth-Moon Lagrange Point L2 in late May or early June 2018, and then launch the Chang’e-4 lunar lander and rover to the Aitken Basin of the south pole region about half a year later, Liu Tongjie, deputy director of the CNSA’s Lunar Exploration and Space Programme Centre said.
“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,” Mr Liu told Xinhua agency.
The far side of the moon is never visible to Earth because of gravitational forces and has never been explored by humans, Liu Jizhong, chief of the lunar exploration centre under China’s state administration of science, technology and industry for national defence said earlier. Chang’e-4 will be the first mission in human history to embark on this expedition, he 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 the relay satellite to transmit signals. 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 on the moon, which was completed in 2013, Liu Tongjie said.
The lander of Chang’e-4 will be equipped with descent and terrain cameras, and the rover will be equipped with a panoramic camera, he said.
The rover of Chang’e-4 will carry subsurface penetrating radar to detect the near surface structure of the moon.
