China Will Launch Its Chang’e-4 To The Other Side Of The Moon That No One Has Ever Been To

On Friday, China is launching its Chang'e-4 to explore somewhere no human has gone before – the other side of the Moon.

In August, at a press conference, the Chinese government revealed the rover Chang’e-4 will take to the moon.

Since then, China hasn’t released any other information about the mission, neither do we know if the launch will be broadcast or not. In August, Xinhua, the state media of China, said that the rover’s name will be decided by the public, but still, nothing.

The unnamed rover set to be launched to the Moon's other side

According to sources, including Andrew Jones, the journalist covering China’s space program, Chang’e-4 is set to be launched on Friday, at 1:20 PM ET. The launch will take place at Xichang Satellite Launch Center, southwest China, with the rocket Long March 3B.

Initially, this rover was meant to back up for the Jade Rabbit rover that China sent to the Moon in 2013, but the country then switched to this more ambitious mission. On the rover, there will be an infrared imaging spectrometer, a panoramic camera as well as radar devices to research the moon’s surface, structures, and soil around where it lands, which is near the Moon’s south pole.

Earlier this year, scientists at the China University of Geosciences published a study describing the target landing spot of Chang’e-4. The target is to land Chang’e-4 in the Von Karman Crater, which is particularly deep.

Long Xiao, one author of the report, explained that the Von Karman is a complex, ancient impact crater. He said that based on gravity and depth measurements of the Von Karman crater, we can figure out the Moon’s mantle.

In this mission, scientists hope to research the upper-mantle materials, smaller rocks as well as dust which make up the crater’s surface.

For decades, astronauts have talked about the other side of the Moon, they’ve always wanted to set up observatories on its far side, somewhere far away from the annoyance of the Earth’s atmosphere. Hence, the lander will carry several scientific instruments, like a low-frequency spectrometer to conduct deep space radio observation at low-frequency.

The Chang'e-4

The mission will take along other instruments for studying the interaction between the planet and the solar wind as well as searching for the sign of water.

No one has ever tried to come here before is partly because of the difficulty in communicating with a spacecraft as there’s no line of sight. To tackle this problem, China’s space agency will use a relay satellite launched earlier this year as a cosmic operator. The satellite will connect the other of the Moon with our home planet through its perch at the second Lagrange point across the Moon’s orbit.

Although China has not officially announced about when the rover will land on the target, Jones said it can be January 3.