China is set to become the first country to land a probe on the Moon's far side. Image Credit: NASA
The ambitious mission, if successful, will achieve what no other country has ever managed to do.
There have been dozens of missions to the Moon over the years, but the far side, which is always facing away from the Earth, remains mostly unexplored.
Now in a renewed bid to become the first country ever to place a lander on the far side, China is aiming to launch two spacecraft later on this year - one with the lander itself and the other with a communications satellite that will relay signals to and from the Earth.
Known collectively as Chang'e 4 after the Chinese moon goddess, the mission represents something of a world first and will catapult China in to the history books as a global leader in lunar exploration.
If all goes to plan, the satellite portion of the mission will be launching in June.
I guess we'll know shortly if there are bases or not. If the lander makes it there without any mysterious "accidents" that cause it to blow up or crash, then I'm guessing no aliens (or other interested parties) were there to shoot it down.
Great job China picking up the thread where others left it. To bad NASA and ESA chose to leave the moon behind. Funding doesn't seem to be s big problem fof thd chinese at this point.
Partly true, it's good that the Chinese are taking part in lunar exploration, it's not true that the others haven't left off. Untrue. NASA has sent multiple probes to lunar orbit over the last few years, including the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2007 and which continues to take the highest resolution images of the Moon ever obtained, the Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission which measured differences in gravity and therefore explore beneath the lunar surface and the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission which explored the extremely ... [More]
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