Chinese Moon Mission

The dark side of the moon isn’t really dark. It has a lunar day just like the near side. The far side just seems dark to us, because it faces away from Earth and we never see it.

US space missions never landed there, but China was determined to explore it. So, they began a multi-decade, unmanned lunar program, named after the Chinese moon goddess, Chang’e.

In 2007 and 2010, Chang’e 1 and 2 spacecrafts orbited and mapped the moon, to determine a landing spot on the near side for Chang’e 3, which successfully touched down in 2013.

But to put a craft on the far side, where radio signals could not reach to control it, took a monumental feat of engineering.

The Chinese first had to build and launch a radio relay satellite, a huge dish orbiting 40,000 miles beyond the moon, that could bounce signals from Earth.

With this in place, they launched Chang’e 4, which became the first spacecraft ever to land on the far side of the moon, in 2019.

The Chinese then launched a more robust Chang’e 6, which contained a large rover.

In 2024, it successfully explored the far side and returned with several pounds of moon rocks.

China’s moon missions have produced important new findings about the moon’s geologic history and magnetic fields, and discovered a new mineral not found on Earth -- which they named of course, Changesite.