China planning lunar probe on ‘dark side’ of the moon

BEIJING - Chinese lunar probe scientist Zou Yongliao says China is planning to be the first to land a lunar probe on the far side of the moon. The mission will be carried out by Chang’e-4, a backup probe for Chang’e-3, and is slated to be launched before 2020, according to a report by the State-owned news agency Xinhua.

Zou added the Government experts have been assessing the plan over the past 12 plus months, and that, if successful, China “will be the first to complete the task”.

Due to gravitational forces, the far side (or “dark side”) of the moon is never visible to Earth. Scientists say that this side’s clean electromagnetic environment makes it an “ideal field for low frequency radio study”. “If we can place a frequency spectrograph on the far side,” Zou said, “we can fill a void.”

In addition to Chang’e-3 (which landed on the moon in 2013) and Chang’e-4, China plans to finish the last chapter in its three-step moon exploration programme with the lunar probe Chang’e-5, which will be launched in 2017 and is expected to achieve such breakthroughs as automatic sampling, ascending from the moon without a launch site and an unmanned docking 400,000 km above the lunar surface. www.webershandwick.cn (ATI).