Wenchang (MidLand) – The Chang’e-6 space probe is expected to reveal the history of the moon’s formation, which is still a mystery to humans, project officials said on Friday.
“The Chang’e-6 mission is very interesting because it will tell us a lot about the ancient history and formation of the Moon, especially because the far side of the Moon is probably a mystical thing, because we have never seen it,” he said on Friday ( 5/3) the head of the “Negative ions on the lunar surface” (NILS) project Neil Melville in Haiko, Hainan province, China.
NILS is a project carried out by the European Space Agency (ESA) which is collaborating on the launch of the Chang’e-6 space probe.
The Chang’e-6, belonging to the China National Space Agency (CNSA), was launched from the Wenchang space launch site, Wednesday (03/05) at 17:27 local time, using a Yao-8 Long carrier rocket March-5.
“I think space exploration encourages us to recognize that the earth is one and that humans are also a species that is a unity. Now that we are continuing our journey which is still in the early stages of exploring space universe, we need to collaborate,” Neil added.
In addition to ESA, the Chang’e-6 mission also collaborates with the French Space Agency (Centre national d’études spatiales or CNES) to provide radon isotope detection on the lunar surface; The Italian Agency for Nuclear Physics (National Institute of Nuclear Physics or INFN) will provide a laser reflector for the landing (Instrumento per l’landing – Roving laser Retroreflector Investigations); as well as a small Pakistani satellite called ICUBE-Q Cubesat that carries a dual optical camera for photographing the lunar surface.
“I’m happy to see all the space agencies responding in the same way. If we continue to do this, we will accelerate towards a future where we have more missions and achieve more objectives, so I’m pretty excited about this launch,” Neil added.
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As for the NILS program, Neil said that, if successful, the program could reveal what happens when the solar wind hits the lunar surface because the Moon does not have a magnetosphere like Earth that can deflect the solar wind from the surface.
“The moon does not have a magnetic field. The solar wind hits it, when the solar wind hits the lunar surface it scatters particles from the lunar surface, so our theory is that there will be negative ions ejected from the lunar surface and they are not strong enough to survive in orbit, so NILS looked to see if our model was correct that the negative ions would be there,” explains Neil.
If there are negative ions on the surface of the Moon, it means it can measure the oxygen, hydrogen, ratio, duration and determine the environmental character of the Moon.
“And even if we don’t find the negative ions, it will still tell us a lot about the models we’ve made previously. The monitoring results will give us information about the lunar surface, the plasma, the ions, what types of materials are there,” he said Neil.
Ultimately, if humans can go to the Moon with more complex machines and want to live on the Moon, then understanding the lunar environment is very important.
“However, the Chang’e-6 mission also presents technical challenges because it lands on the far side of the Moon, so it cannot make direct radio communications because it is blocked by the position of the Moon itself. So, we need an additional satellite or satellites in so communications can be connected to earth,” Neil said.
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The Chang’e-6 mission will land on the far side of the Moon (the side not visible from Earth) at a location called the South Pole Aitken Basin, which is a basin with a diameter of about 2,400 kilometers and is the oldest and largest basin known to man on the Moon.
Since the landing site will be on the far side of the Moon, it is not possible to communicate directly with ground stations on Earth, so relay communication support is provided by the Queqiao-2 satellite.
The Chang’e-6 mission consists of an orbiter, a lander, an ascender, and a reentry module.
Chang’e-6 is also equipped with a landing camera, panoramic camera, mineral spectrum analyzer, lunar soil structure detector and national flag display system.
The total time for the Chang’e-6 mission was 53 days with a sampling duration on the far side of the Moon of “only” 14 hours due to limited radio communication time on the far side of the Moon.
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Reporter: Desca Lidya Natalia
Editor: Aditya Eko Sigit Wicaksono
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