NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has gotten its first look at China’s Chang’e 6 spacecraft on the far side of the moon.
The Change 6 The lander is flanked by two craters that are similar in size and sits on the edge of a much subtler crater about 50 meters wide, reports Mark Robinson, the principal investigator of the sharp-eyed camera system aboard the LRO.
LRO spotted Chang’e 6 in the Apollo Basin on the other side the moon on June 7, 2024. The lander is seen as a small group of bright pixels in the center of the image.
Rim shot
LRO photographed China’s Chang’e 6 sample return spacecraft on the far side of the moon, five days after the latter’s launch to land.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) team calculated the landing site coordinates as minus 41.6385 degrees north latitude and 206.0148 degrees east longitude, at minus 17,244 feet (minus 5,256 m) altitude relative to the mean lunar surface, with a estimated horizontal accuracy of plus or minus 100 feet (30 m).
“The increased brightness of the terrain around the lander is due to disturbance by the lander’s engine and is comparable to the blast zone around other lunar landers,” the LROC team wrote in a message. Image description.
Related: Watch China’s Chang’e 6 probe land on the far side of the moon in dramatic video
LROC team members also posted an image of the same area, taken on March 3, 2022, to show what it looked like before Chang’e 6’s landing and to highlight the spacecraft’s presence on the lunar surface.
The Chang’e 6 landing site is located on a mare unit – 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 encountered a local topographic high, likely related to a fault.
“Several wrinkle ridges in this region have distorted and raised the mare surface,” the LROC image description said. “The landing site is located approximately halfway between two of these ridges. The lava flow also overlaps a slightly older flow (~3.3 Ga), visible further east, but the younger flow is distinctive because it contains more iron oxide (FeO) and titanium oxide .(TiO2) abundances.” (“Go” is scientist-speak for “billion years ago.”)
On the way home
Chang’e 6 was launched on May 3 from southern China’s Hainan province, aiming to return lunar samples from the far side of the moon to Soil for the first time ever.
After collecting lunar samples was completed, the probe’s ascent segment departed from the lunar surface with the precious cargo on June 3.
After reuniting with the Chang’e 6 mission orbiter and completing the transfer of lunar samples, the returning segment will continue to orbit the moon, awaiting the moment to begin its return journey to Earth.
The mission’s return capsule is expected to land on our planet on or around June 25 with its stash of lunar collectibles. The capsule will parachute into a pre-selected landing zone near Siziwang Banner in North China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, concluding the 53-day space mission.