THE RED MOON
Space race first as Chinese land robot probe on the ‘dark side’
China took a great leap forward in the space race yesterday by becoming the first country to land a craft on the ‘dark side’ of the Moon.
The chang’e 4 robotic probe is part of the communist regime’s plan to become a major power in extraterrestrial travel.
Beijing plans a manned space station by 2022 as part of its £3.9billion-a-year exploration programme. Experts say it is now highly likely that the next voice heard from the surface of the Moon will speak Mandarin.
chang’e 4 has already beamed back photographs that appear to show a barren red landscape, although experts say this is a trick of the camera’s light and not the true colour of the lunar surface.
it is unmanned but does carry life from Earth. a 7lb aluminium pod contains a biosphere holding silkworm eggs and seedlings of several species including cress and potato. if it blossoms, the cress plant, which is kept in a nutrient-rich solution, will be the first flower on the moon, chinese state media said. Potatoes have been chosen as they could be a major food source for space explorers.
chang’e 4 – named after a moon goddess in chinese mythology landed smoothly at 2.26am GMT yesterday after descending from an orbit 9.3 miles above the Moon’s surface.
it was guided by a relay satellite positioned to beam instructions from Earth as the far side of the Moon – often called the dark side even though it spends half its time in sunlight – is never visible to us because of the Moon’s rotation. chang’e 4 will explore the Von Karman crater, part of the vast South Poleaitken basin believed to have been formed by a huge impact early in the Moon’s history.
The combined lander and rover, which has a gold foil cover to protect against radiation, will make astronomical observations and probe the structure and mineral composition of the terrain above and below the surface.
The landing highlights china’s growing ambition to rival the US, Russia and Europe in space – and to cement its position as a regional and global power.
Professor Hou Xiyun of Nanjing University said: ‘on the whole, china’s space technology still lags behind the West, but with the landing on the far side of the Moon, we have raced to the front.’
china now has Mars, Jupiter and the asteroid belt in its sights, he said, adding: ‘There’s no doubt that our nation will go farther and farther.’ The solar system could be flung apart by a galaxy that is hurtling towards the Milky Way. But the collision with the large Magellanic cloud will not happen for two billion years, astrophysicists at Durham University say today in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal astronomical Society.
That is still much earlier than the impact between the Milky Way and another neighbouring galaxy, andromeda, which scientists predict will happen in eight billion years.
Paul Thomas’s view: Page 19