When the Chang\u2019e-4 mission landed in the Von Karman crater on January 3, 2019, China became the first and only country to land on the far side of the moon \u2014 the side that always faces away from Earth. <\/p>\n
Now, China is sending another mission to the far side, and this time, its goal is to return the first samples of the moon\u2019s \u201chidden side\u201d to Earth. <\/p>\n
The Chang\u2019e-6 mission, launched Friday, is set to spend 53 days exploring the South Pole-Aitken basin to study its geology and topography as well as collect samples from different spots across the crater. <\/p>\n
The South Pole-Aitken basin is believed to be the largest and oldest crater on the moon, spanning nearly a quarter of the lunar surface with a diameter measuring roughly 1,550 miles (2,500 kilometers). The impact crater is more than 5 miles (8 kilometers) deep. <\/p>\n
Related article<\/span> Japan\u2019s \u2018Moon Sniper\u2019 keeps baffling experts by waking up. It has shared images from its latest lunar \u2018day\u2019<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Scientists hope that returning samples to Earth will help answer enduring questions about the intriguing far side, which hasn\u2019t been studied as deeply as the near side, as well as confirming the moon\u2019s origin. <\/p>\n \u201cThe far side of the moon is very different from the near side,\u201d said Li Chunlai, China National Space Administration deputy chief designer. \u201cThe far is basically comprised of ancient lunar crust and highlands, so there are a lot of scientific questions to be answered there.\u201d <\/p>\n During a NASA budget hearing on April 17, congressman David Trone asked NASA administrator Bill Nelson why China was sending a mission to the \u201cbackside\u201d of the moon. <\/p>\n \u201cThey are going to have a lander on the far side of the moon, which is the side that\u2019s always in dark,\u201d Nelson responded. \u201cWe\u2019re not planning to go there.\u201d <\/p>\n The moon\u2019s hidden side has sometimes been referred to as the \u201cdark side of the moon,\u201d largely in reference to the 1973 Pink Floyd album of the same name. <\/p>\n But the phrase is a bit of a misnomer for a couple of reasons, according to experts. <\/p>\n While the far side of the moon may seem dark from our perspective, it experiences a lunar day and lunar night just like the near side, and receives plenty of illumination. A lunar day lasts just over 29 days, while the lunar night lasts for about two weeks, according to NASA. <\/p>\n The same side always faces Earth because the moon takes the same amount of time to complete an orbit of Earth and rotate around its axis: about 27 days. <\/p>\n Related article<\/span> Scientists say they\u2019ve traced the origins of a potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroid to the far side of the moon<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Additionally, the far side of the moon has been more difficult to study, which led to the \u201cdark side\u201d nickname and created an air of mystery. <\/p>\n \u201cHumans always want to know what\u2019s on the other side of the mountain and the part that you can\u2019t see, so that\u2019s a kind of psychological motivation,\u201d said Renu Malhotra, the Louise Foucar Marshall Science Research Professor and Regents Professor of Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson. \u201cOf course, we\u2019ve sent space probes that have orbited the moon, and we have images, so in a sense, it\u2019s less mysterious than before.\u201d <\/p>\n Several spacecraft, including NASA\u2019s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that constantly circles and takes images of the lunar surface, have helped to shed light on the moon. <\/p>\n Yutu-2, a lunar rover that Chang\u2019e-4 released in 2019, also explored loose deposits of pulverized rock and dust littering the floor of Von Karman crater, located within the larger South Pole-Aitken basin. <\/p>\n But returning samples to Earth would enable the latest and most sensitive technology to analyze lunar rocks and dust, potentially revealing how the moon came to be and why its far side is so different from the near side. <\/p>\n Despite years of orbital data and samples collected during six of the Apollo missions, scientists are still trying to answer key questions about the moon. <\/p>\n \u201cThe reason the far side is so compelling is because it is so different than the side of the moon that we see, the near side,\u201d said Noah Petro, NASA project scientist for both the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Artemis III, a mission which aims to land humans on the moon for the first time since 1972. \u201cFor all of human history, humans have been able to look up and see the same surface, the same side of the moon.\u201d <\/p>\n But in 1959 the Soviet Union sent a probe to fly past the far side of the moon and captured the first images of it for humanity. <\/p>\n \u201cWe saw this completely different hemisphere: not covered in large volcanic lava flows, pockmarked with craters, a thicker crust. It just tells a different story than the near side,\u201d Petro said. <\/p>\n Returning samples with robotic missions, and landing humans near the transition between the two lunar regions at the south pole through the Artemis program, \u201cwill help tell this more complete story of lunar history that we are lacking in right now,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Although scientists understand why one side of the moon always faces Earth, they don\u2019t know why that particular side permanently faces our planet. But it could have something to do with the moon being asymmetrical, Malhotra said. <\/p>\n \u201cThere is some asymmetry between the side that\u2019s facing us and the other side,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat exactly caused those asymmetries? What actually are these asymmetries? We have little understanding of that. That\u2019s a huge scientific question.\u201d <\/p>\n Orbital data has also revealed that the near side has a thinner crust and more volcanic deposits, but answers to why that is has eluded researchers, said Brett Denevi, a planetary geologist at the Johns Hopkins University\u2019s Applied Physics Lab. <\/p>\n \u201cIt has a different kind of geochemical composition with some weird extra heat-producing elements. There are a ton of models for why the near side is different than the far side, but we don\u2019t have the data yet,\u201d Denevi said. \u201cSo going to the far side, getting samples and doing different kinds of geophysical measurements is really important to figuring out this really long, long standing mystery.\u201d <\/p>\n Chang\u2019e-6 is just one mission heading to the moon\u2019s far side as NASA has plans to send robotic missions there as well. <\/p>\n Denevi helped design a mission concept for a lunar rover called Endurance, which will undertake a long drive across the South Pole-Aitken basin to collect data and samples before delivering them to the Artemis landing sites near the lunar south pole. Then, astronauts can study the samples and determine which ones to return to Earth. <\/p>\n One of the most fundamental questions that scientists have tried to answer is how the moon formed. The prevailing theory is that some kind of object had an impact with Earth early in its history, and a giant chunk that went flying off our planet formed the moon. <\/p>\n Scientists also want to know how the moon\u2019s original crust formed. Related article<\/span> Boeing and NASA decide to move forward with historic crewed launch of new spacecraft<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe think at one point the moon was entirely molten, and it was this ocean of magma, and as that solidified, minerals floated to the top of this ocean, and that\u2019s that lighter terrain that we can see today,\u201d Denevi said. \u201cGetting to the really big expanses of pristine terrain on the far side is just one of the goals.\u201d <\/p>\n Meanwhile, the study of impact craters littering the lunar surface provides a history of how things moved around during the solar system\u2019s early days at a critical point when life was starting to form on Earth, Denevi said. <\/p>\n \u201cAs impacts were happening on the moon, impacts were happening on the Earth at the same time,\u201d Petro said. \u201cAnd so whenever we look at these ancient events on the moon, we\u2019re learning a little bit about what\u2019s happening on the Earth as well.\u201d <\/p>\n Visiting the South Pole-Aitken basin could be the start of solving a multitude of lunar mysteries, Malhotra said. While researchers believe they have an idea of when the crater formed, perhaps 4.3 billion to 4.4 billion years ago, collecting rock samples could provide a definitive age. <\/p>\n \u201cMany scientists are sure that if we figured out the age of that depression,\u201d she said, \u201cit\u2019s going to unlock all kinds of mysteries about the history of the moon.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When the Chang\u2019e-4 mission landed in the Von Karman crater on January 3, 2019, China…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2986,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} No real \u2018dark side\u2019<\/h3>\n
Far side mysteries<\/h3>\n
Cracking the lunar code<\/h3>\n
Volcanic flows created dark patches on the moon, while the lighter parts of the surface represent the moon\u2019s primordial crust. <\/p>\n