INCREDIBLE images from China's Chang’e 6 lander, which landed on the far side of the moon late on June 1 and lifted off in an ascent vehicle with the first lunar samples from the far side of the moon yesterday.
Image credit: CNSA
@skrishna Amazing! Finally a lander that didn't topple over!
@skrishna real question: why is there light? isn’t the backside of the moon dark night?
@skrishna That's impressive. Is the colour accurate on those photos? I guess for some reason I always assumed lunar regolith was neutral and gray, here it looks quite saturated and almost the colour of wet sand.
@skrishna they look weird, must be AI! (jk)
@skrishna feels properly lonely with black void above 😮
@skrishna I could search but I’m sure you know: was it remotely operated or (semi?) autonomous? (Given that it was on the far side, achieving reliable comms may have been challenging enough that they had to make it autonomous?).
Anyway, those picture are so good compared to what we saw recently!
@skrishna beautiful pictures and big congrats to china's space agency.
@bibipov I know the rendezvous and docking in orbit will be autonomous, I don't know about the ascent! They do have communication though thanks to a relay satellite they placed in orbit.
@skrishna Thanks a lot! I knew I would get more info by asking you. So I searched a bit and their Queqiao sats are in earth’s orbit (Lagrange L2), not around the moon like I thought. I think that means days of reliable coms but now I want to know how much out of 28 days and I need to research that 😀
@LonM I'm pretty sure it's color accurate! The moon does have some color surface features, plus when the angle of the sun hits just right it looks more brown than gray.
@LonM To clarify: I'm guessing because it's hard to get info out of the Chinese Space Agency, as you can imagine, but I will dig to see what I can find!
@rw007 nope!! it doesn't ever face us but that side of the moon is lit by the sun. This was taken at the South Pole-Aitken basin on the moon and I believe the sun started rising there around May 27.
@skrishna ah right of course. dummy me, should read heliocentric by Galileo again (-;
@solarisfire also Intuitive Machines needs to upgrade to whatever this camera is!!!
@skrishna I think a lot of people could learn from the Chinese when it comes to lunar landings... They've got the highest success% right?
@solarisfire percent wise, basically yes! they're tied with japan for 100% (but SLIM landed on its face and is just one landing vs 4 now for China)