Successful launch for the Chinese space probe Chang’e 6, which took off on May 3 towards the far side of the Moon. Why explore this lunar side which is invisible to us from Earth? And how ? Response elements.
The new Chang’e 6 mission, named after the Chinese moon goddess Chang’e, will bring back rock samples from the far side of the moon, a first in human history. A earth or rather a luna incognita since only the China managed to land a Rover there in 2018 with the Chang’e 4 automatic mission, which continues to provide information on this slope invisible from Earth and still completely unexplored.
The location chosen by the Chinese on this hidden side of the Moon was obviously not done at random. It is on the remains of a gigantic crater located in the southern hemisphere of the Moon which contains a potential reservoir of rocks coming from the depths of the lunar mantle, hence the interest in taking these rock samples there, and then bring them back to Earth for analysis.
Because China is part of the very closed circle of space powers capable of bringing lunar samples back to Earth, with the United States during the Apollo missions and the Russia Soviet with the Luna mission. China has already brought back 1,731 grams of lunar rocks with the Chang’e 5 mission in 2020, and is preparing to repeat this feat on the far side of the Moon, a side that astronaut William Anders, the first human having observed it, during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, described it as follows: “ The other side (of the Moon) looks like a pile of sand that my children once played with. »
A lunar sandbox whose secrets scientists dream of unlocking. But we still need to be able to collect them and, above all, bring them back to Earth using the sophisticated instruments on board the Chang’e 6 landing module.
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Towards an international station on the Moon in 2030?
As always in space together, we go further, it is in collaboration with other international players, starting with Cnes and the Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetology of Toulouse, which designed the radon detector Dorn (to trace the presence of water and uranium on the Moon). This will also be the first time that a French instrument will be found on the Moon. The Chinese probe also carries a cube of Pakistani nano-satellites, a Swedish ion detector and an Italian laser reflector.
Once placed on lunar soil after a stay in orbit, it will very quickly, in 48 hours, be carried out underground drilling to take, yet another first, a core of lunar rock at a depth of 2 meters, this capsule of sample taken will then join the orbital module which will transfer it to Earth for analysis at the end of June. Which would also allow us to better understand the terrain with the aim of installing a base, the return to the Moon is in fact on everyone’s minds and in preparation by international space agencies.
An international research station at the South Pole of the Moon should theoretically see the light of day in 2030 and the Chinese space agency is very involved in this future lunar base. It is with this in mind that a hundred Chinese scientists have just produced the most complete geological atlas of the moon to date, it is the prestigious scientific journal Nature who teaches it to us; by compiling the geological surveys carried out by all the lunar missions from Apollo to Chang’e, this new lunar atlas in Chinese and English, which required more than ten years of work, has just been integrated into the Digital Moon platform and should soon be available for consultation by the entire international scientific community which still has its feet on the ground, but its head already in the moon, even on its hidden side.
