Only three countries in the history of mankind managed to land on a natural satellite of the Earth: the United States, the Soviet Union and in 2013 China. Now China is planning to land where no man or spacecraft has yet been: on the far side of the moon.
The unmanned mission of Chang'e 4, scheduled for 2020, will study the geology of the “dark” side of the moon and help shed light on the following questions: why are there less dark spots on the back? Are there enough helium-3 reserves on the back that could be mined?
The main obstacle to landing on the far side of the moon is that the moon itself blocks radio signals from the earth, which puts the spacecraft at risk.
Nevertheless, China can relatively easily solve this problem by launching a satellite repeater into the Moon’s orbit, just as NASA did in the case of Curiosity on Mars.
“The Chinese space program has already demonstrated that they can land on the moon and build communications satellites,” says astronomer Michael Brown in an interview with Al-Jazeera. “Thus, their goal to“ lean ”on the far side of the moon by 2020 looks feasible.”
Based on Al Jazeera
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