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.
The Chang’e 6 the lander is flanked by two similar-sized craters and is on the edge of a much more subtle crater about 165 feet (50 meters) wide, reports Mark Robinson, principal investigator of the sharp-eyed camera system aboard LRO.
LRO spotted Chang’e 6 in the Apollo basin on the other side Moon June 7, 2024. The lander is visible as a small cluster of bright pixels in the center of the image.
Rim shot
LRO photographed the Chinese probe Chang’e 6 on the far side of the moon five days after it landing.
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 an altitude of minus 17,244 feet (minus 5,256 m) relative to the mean lunar surface, with an estimated horizontal to an accuracy of plus or minus 100 feet (30 m).
“The increased brightness of the terrain around the lander is caused by lander engine interference and is similar to the blast zone observed around other lunar landers,” the LROC team wrote in the paper. description of the picture.
Related: Watch the landing of China’s Chang’e 6 probe on the far side of the moon in dramatic video
LROC team members also released an image of the same area taken on March 3, 2022, to show what it looked like before the Chang’e 6 landing and highlight the presence of the spacecraft on the lunar surface.
The Chang’e 6 landing site is located on a mare—a “sea” of cooled volcanic rock—on the southern edge of the Apollo Basin.
Robinson and colleagues at Arizona State University note that basaltic lava erupted south of Chaffee S Crater about 3.1 billion years ago and flowed downhill to the east until it hit a local topographic high, likely related to the fault.
“Several wrinkled ridges in this area have deformed and raised the mare’s surface,” the LROC image description says. “The landing site lies approximately halfway between two of these ridges. The lava flow also overlies a slightly older flow (~3.3 Ga) visible further east, but the younger flow is prominent because it has higher iron oxide (FeO) and oxide titanium dioxide. (TiO2) abundance.” (“Ga,” according to scientists, is “billions of years ago.”)
Heading home
Chang’e 6 lifted off from southern China’s Hainan province on May 3 to return lunar samples from the far side of the Moon to Earth for the first time ever.
After completing the collection of lunar samples, the probe segment left the lunar surface with a rare payload. on June 3.
After reuniting with the Chang’e 6 orbiter and completing the transfer of the lunar sample, the return segment to the Moon continues and waits for the time to begin the return journey back to Earth.
The mission’s return capsule is expected to land on our planet on or around June 25 with its stack of lunar collectibles. The capsule will parachute into a pre-selected landing zone at Siziwang Banner in northern China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, ending its 53-day space mission.