China successfully landed a robotic spacecraft on the far side of the Moon, the first ever such attempt and landing

 

China says it has successfully landed a robotic spacecraft on the far side of the Moon, the first ever such attempt and landing.

The Chang'e-4 lunar rover is lifted into space from the Xichang launch centre in Xichang in China's southwestern Sichuan province on Dec 07,2018

At 10:26 Beijing time (02:26 GMT), the unmanned Chang'e-4 probe touched down in the South Pole-Aitken Basin, state media said.

It is carrying instruments to characterise the region's geology, as well as a biological experiment.
State media called the landing "a major milestone in space exploration"

While past missions have been to the Earth-facing side, this is the first time a craft has landed on the unexplored far side.

The probe has sent some first pictures from the surface.

With no direct communications link possible, all pictures and data are first sent to a separate satellite and then relayed from there to earth.

A never-before-seen 'close range' image taken by the Chinese spacecraft Chang'e-4 of the surface of the far side of the moon. It appears to take on a reddish hue in some of the images released by China, seemingly an effect of the lights used by the probe

A TIMELINE OF HOW CHINA REACHED THE FAR SIDE OF THE MOON

October 24 2007 - China launches Chang'e-1, an unmanned satellite, into space where it remains operational for more than a year. 

October 1 2010 - China launches Chang'e-2. This was part of the first phase of the Chinese moon programme. It was in a 100-km-high lunar orbit to gather data for the upcoming Chang'e-3 mission. 

September 29, 2011 - China launched Tiangong 1. 

September 15 2013 - A second space lab, Tiangong 2, is launched. 

December 1 2013 - Chang'e-3 launched.  

December 14 2013 - Chang'e-3, a 2,600 lb (1,200 kg) lunar probe landed on the near side of the moon successfully. It became the first object to soft-land on the Moon since Luna 24 in 1976. 

April 1 2018 - Tiangong-1 crashed into Earth at 17,000 mph and lands in the ocean off the coast if Tahiti. 

May 20 2018 - China launched a relay satellite named Queqiao which is stationed in operational orbit about 40,000 miles beyond the moon. This is designed to enable Chang'e-4 to communicate wit engineers back on Earth. 

December 7 2018 - Chinese space agency announces it has laumched the Chang'e-4 probe into space. 

December 12 2018 -  Retrorockets on the probe fired to stabilise the spacecraft and slow it down. 

December 31 2018 -   The probe prepared for the first-ever soft landing on the far side of the moon.  

WHAT IS THE 'DARK SIDE' OF THE MOON? 

The far side of the moon - colloquially known as the dark side - actually gets as much light as the near side but always faces away from Earth. 

The far side of the Moon was first observed in 1959, when the Soviet Luna 3 spacecraft returned the first images.  

In 1968, astronauts aboard the Apollo 8 spacecraft were the first humans to set eyes on the far side in person as they orbited the moon.

Since then, several missions by NASA and other space agencies have imaged the lunar far side. 

That includes NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft, which imaged the far side from a distance of 31 million miles (49m km) in 2008.

This relatively unexplored region is mountainous and rugged, making a successful landing much harder to achieve. 

China's Chang'e-4 mission that landed in January 2019 was the first to touch down on the surface of the far side.