Chairman Tickles
Banned
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/world/asia/china-change-4-moon.htmlChina reached a milestone in space exploration on Thursday, landing a vehicle on the far side of the moon for the first time in history, state media announced.
The landing of the probe, called Chang’e-4 after the moon goddess in Chinese mythology, is one in a coming series of missions that underscore the country’s ambitions to join — and even lead — the space race.
China landed another rover on the moon in 2013, joining the United States and the Soviet Union as the only nations to have carried out a “soft landing” there, but the Chang’e-4 is the first to touch down on the side of the moon that perpetually faces away from the Earth.
“This space mission shows that China has reached the advanced world-class level in deep space exploration,” said Zhu Menghua, a professor at the Macau University of Science and Technology who has worked closely with China’s space administration. “We Chinese people have done something that the Americans have not dared try.”
Although a latecomer by decades to space exploration, China is quickly catching up, experts say, and could challenge the United States for supremacy in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other fields.
China now plans to begin fully operating its third space station by 2022, to put astronauts in a lunar base by later in that decade, and to send probes to Mars, including ones that could return samples of the Martian surface back to Earth.
This is a rover, with a telescope and potato spuds that are meant to grow inside it using a hydroponic setup.
What's interesting about this feat is that it was always a pain in the arse, due to the lack of communications from that side of the moon. China had to put a relay satellite into a very awkward and unstable orbit to pull this off. Well done.
I hope to see more countries doing spacey things.
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