NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has taken its first look at China’s Chang’e 6 spacecraft on the far side of the moon.
O Change 6 The lander is flanked by two similar-sized craters and is on the edge of a much subtler crater about 165 feet (50 meters) wide, reports Mark Robinson, the principal investigator for the onboard camera system. from LRO.
LRO spotted Chang’e 6 within the Apollo basin, on the other side of the the moon on June 7, 2024. The lander is seen as a small cluster of bright pixels in the center of the image.
Edge shot
LRO photographed China’s Chang’e 6 sample return spacecraft on the lunar far side five days after the last land.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) team calculated the coordinates of the landing site as minus 41.6385 degrees north latitude and 206.0148 degrees east longitude, at minus 17,244 feet (minus 5,256 m) elevation from the surface average lunar, with an estimated horizontal accuracy of plus or minus 100 feet (30 m).
“The increased brightness of the terrain around the lander is due to disturbance of the lander’s engine and is similar to the blast zone seen around other lunar landers,” the LROC team wrote in a statement. Image description.
Related: Watch China’s Chang’e 6 probe land on the far side of the Moon in dramatic video
LROC team members also posted an image of the same area taken on March 3, 2022, to show what it looked like before Chang’e 6 landed and to highlight the spacecraft’s presence on the lunar surface.
The Chang’e 6 landing site is situated in a mare unit – a “sea” of cooled volcanic rock – at the southern end of the Apollo basin.
Robinson and colleagues at Arizona State University note that basaltic lava erupted south of Chaffee S crater approximately 3.1 billion years ago and flowed eastward downhill until it encountered a local topographic rise, likely related to a fault.
“Several wrinkled ridges in this region have deformed and raised the sea surface,” the LROC image description states. “The landing site is approximately halfway between two of these ridges. The lava flow also overlaps a slightly older (~3.3 Ga) flow visible further east, but the younger flow is distinct because has greater iron oxide (FeO) and titanium oxide (TiO2) abundance.” (“Ga” is scientific language for “billions of years ago”).
RELATED STORIES:
– This is what China’s first lunar landing with astronauts looks like (video)
– China’s next lunar missions get green light
– China makes samples from the moon Chang’e 5 open to international researchers
Headed home
Chang’e 6 was launched from China’s southern Hainan Province on May 3 with the aim of sending lunar samples from the far side of the Moon to Earth for the first time.
After completing lunar sample collection, the probe’s ascending segment departed the lunar surface with the precious cargo on June 3.
After rejoining the Chang’e 6 mission orbiter and completing the lunar sample transfer, the return segment continues to orbit the Moon, awaiting the moment to begin its return journey back to Earth.
The mission’s return capsule is expected to land on our planet around June 25 with its cache of lunar collectibles. The capsule will parachute into a pre-chosen landing zone in Siziwang Banner in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, ending its 53-day space mission.
