Mission to moon:
China’s lunar landing has scientists across the world captivated.
BEIJING — When China landed its first lunar rover on the moon last month, many Americans reacted with a shrug. After all, the U.S. sent men to the moon more than 40 years ago, and the Soviets landed a rover there too.
But among lunar scientists, the Chang’e 3 mission has generated considerable interest. They say the lander and the rover, equipped with ground-penetrating radar, cameras, a telescope and spectroscopic instruments, could gather significant new information, especially relating to the chemical composition and depth of the lunar soil.
Such data, they say, could shed light on the history of the moon and, by extension, Earth. It could also help humans design equipment to mine the lunar surface for oxygen and other elements.
In addition, experts say, the Chinese mission is testing new equipment and technology that could be useful for future missions — manned or unmanned — not only to the moon but also to Mercury or Mars.
“The parts of the moon that have been explored are so minuscule,” said Leroy Chiao, a former NASA astronaut and International Space Station commander. “It’s like saying you sent probes to the Earth, you looked at small areas of California and New York and now you know everything there is to know. That’s not the case.”
Stephen Mackwell, director of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, noted that the Chang’e 3 mission landed in an area — the right eye of the “Man in the Moon” — distinctly different from previous U.S. and Soviet missions.
In the years since Americans and Soviet crafts visited the lunar surface, he said, orbiters launched by Europe, Japan, the U.S. and others have gathered extensive data about the moon’s structure and composition. Now, the Chinese rover may help validate and refine that data, giving detailed information about the concentrations of elements such as titanium, aluminum, iron, potassium and sodium.