China has launched a ground-breaking mission to land a
spacecraft on the largely unexplored far side of the moon. The Chinese government described the landing of the
Chang’e-4 probe as evidence of the country’s growing stature in space
exploration. “It is human nature to explore the unknown world,” Wu Weiren,
chief designer of the lunar mission for the China National Space
Administration, said in an interview on the state television network, CCTV. “And it is what our generation and the next generation are supposed to do.”
The Chinese government would not disclose how much it spends
on its space programs, but it has made it clear that this launch was part of an
ambitious goal to establish China as one of the world’s space powers, rivaling
the United States. Officials have said the country hopes to establish a lunar
base that could provide natural resources for the Earth but also serve as a
launching pad for further exploration.
The first of three photographs sent by Chang’e-4 appeared a
little over an hour after the spacecraft touched down as planned at 10:26 a.m.,
Beijing time, in the middle of a crater not far from the moon’s south pole.
One showed a barren, undulating vista pocked by a smaller
crater. Contrary to the enduring but mistaken notion that the moon has a “dark
side” the photograph showed the
landscape bathed in an orange hue, casting the sharp shadows from the lander.
The other two, in black and white, showed the lander descending.
On January 3, 2019 Chang'e 4 landed on the moon's largest
and oldest impact crater, the South Pole-Aitken Basin, on the far side of the
moon.
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