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Moon Exploration: Unmanned Missions

Here's an update ...
We've Got New Photos of That Weird Substance China Found on The Moon

China's Yutu-2 lunar lander just sent back new images of a strange substance it found near a small crater on the far side of the Moon. ...

So what is it? The best guess we have so far is that it's a piece of lunar glass that formed during a meteor impact.

It's likely that the Chinese researchers will release more images and spectrometer readings of the mysterious substance in the future.

It will have to — at the very least — wait for the Sun to rise again to continue its investigation. And that's roughly a week from now. ...
FULL STORY (With Photos):
https://www.sciencealert.com/we-ve-got-new-photos-of-that-weird-substance-china-found-on-the-moon
 
there is a weird block of pale colour at centre of the crater close-up, but it does look like someones selected a rough trapezium shape in paint and added some light colours
 
there is a weird block of pale colour at centre of the crater close-up, but it does look like someones selected a rough trapezium shape in paint and added some light colours
If you copy the pic and paste it into a paint program and then zoom right in, then you can see it. It looks colourised (like an old B & W photo) and is very pale.
 
An update ...
China Releases a New Photo of The Mystery Substance They Found on The Moon

In August, Chinese lunar rover Yutu-2 discovered something strange on the far side of the Moon: a mysterious substance that the Chinese space agency referred to as "gel-like" and "colored".

And now, China's Lunar Exploration Program has released a new photo of the substance - shedding more light on what the strange substance could possibly be.

According to experts, it's most likely what scientists initially hypothesized: dark glass formed as a result of an impact - the same stuff American astronauts found during the Apollo 17 mission ...
SOURCE: https://www.sciencealert.com/we-fin...mysterious-substance-yutu-2-found-on-the-moon
 
Update ... Newly published analysis concludes the mystery substance is melted rock ...
Glistening 'Gel-Like' Substance on Far Side of The Moon Finally Identified

A peculiar "gel-like" substance the Chinese Yutu-2 rover discovered in a small impact crater on the far side of the Moon last year has now been identified. According to analysis of the images, and comparison with Apollo samples here on Earth, it's exactly what you'd expect to find on the Moon: rock.

More specifically, it's rock that was melted together - likely in the heat of a meteorite impact - to form a dark green, glossy, glassy mass.

"Chang'e-4 rover discovered a dark greenish and glistening impact melt breccia in a crater during its traverse on the floor of Von Kármán crater within the South Pole Aitken (SPA) basin on the lunar farside," the researchers wrote in their paper.

"It was formed by impact-generated welding, cementing, and agglutinating of lunar regolith and breccia." ...

FULL STORY:
https://www.sciencealert.com/we-fin...like-substance-on-the-far-side-of-the-moon-is

Published Report:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012821X20303228
 
Heading home with moon rocks.

A Chinese spacecraft has lifted off from the moon with a load of lunar rocks, the first stage of its return to Earth, the government space agency reported.

Chang’e 5, the third Chinese spacecraft to land on the moon and the first to take off from it again, is the latest in a series of increasingly ambitious missions for Beijing’s space programme, which also has an orbiter and rover headed to Mars. The Chang’e 5 touched down Tuesday on the Sea of Storms on the moon’s near side. Its mission was to collect about 2kg (4lbs) of lunar rocks and bring them back to Earth, the first return of samples since Soviet spacecraft did so in the 1970s.

Earlier, the US Apollo astronauts brought back hundreds of pounds of moon rocks.

The landing site is near a formation called the Mons Rumker and may contain rocks billions of years younger than those retrieved earlier.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/world/arid-40148858.html
 
Lets hope they are not my rocks...

"Oh, these looked very attractive on the beach, but now they are home they look quite boring."

(We had some lunar rocks in for our village celebration in 2011, the bicentenary of Neville Masklyn. How he would have been overjoyed!)
 
Ground Control.

A 24-year-old female space commander has become a viral sensation on Chinese social media for her work on the Chang'e-5 Moon exploration programme.

Despite being the youngest commander at the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site, Zhou Chengyu is known at work as "Big Sister" as a sign of respect. The Chang'e-5 mission is China's third successful Moon landing in seven years. Ms Zhou was in charge of the rocket connector system - described as a pivotal role.

The young astronaut has been a trending topic on Weibo since Chinese state media highlighted her as one of the women involved in the successful launch of the Chang'e-5 lunar probe on 23 November. Her story in particular has resonated with the public given her young age. Social media users have been celebrating her "brilliance" and referring to her as a "source of pride" for the country. ...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55226099
 
Danger of Lunar ice contamination.

With its lunar sample-return mission last month, China kicked off a new surge in visitors to the Moon.

At least eight spacecraft from nations including Russia, India, China, Japan and the United States are set to touch down on the lunar surface in the next three years.

For the first time ever, several of the upcoming missions will explore some of the Moon’s most scientifically intriguing, yet sensitive areas — those at its poles. Researchers are excited about studying water that lies frozen in shadowed craters in these regions. But they’re also worried that increased traffic to the Moon might contaminate the very ice they want to study.

The ice is important to scientists for various reasons. Some want to analyse pristine samples to unlock clues to how and when Earth and the Moon accumulated water billions of years ago. Others want to mine the ice as fuel for rockets at future lunar bases.

Explorers now face a complicated choice. Do they start digging right away, to work out the processes by which they’ll mine the ice and convert it to fuel? Or do they proceed slowly, to carefully preserve the scientific record encoded in the ice? “Right now, we’ve got some scientists saying we can’t go anywhere near it because we’re going to ruin it,” says Clive Neal, a geoscientist at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. “And others say we need it, so we’re just going to go for it.” ...

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03262-9
 
Manx on the Moon.


Images of the first digital stamps used by the Isle of Man Post Office, featuring different versions of the Triskelion flag.
IMAGE SOURCE, ISLE OF MAN GOVERNMENT Image caption, The first digital stamps used by the Isle of Man Post Office feature the triskelion flag.


Digital Manx stamps are to be sent to the Moon on a mission to discover how data centres work in space.

Digital Isle of Man and space data storage company Lonestar are taking part in NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services programme. It aims to explore how data could be stored on the Moon and retrieved should a catastrophe take place on earth.

Enterprise Minister Tim Johnston said the island was building on its "history of innovation in the space sector".

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-66202805
 
The seems the best place for this - granite found on the moon (so where is the water?):

"In the past, we have found some bits of granite from lunar samples taken from the Moon. However, the amount of granite in those samples has been extremely small, especially when compared to the more than 800 pounds of lunar soil and rock taken for sampling. So how is it that a huge cache of granite came to be on the Moon?"

https://bgr.com/science/researchers-found-granite-on-the-moon-and-have-no-idea-how-it-got-there/
 
The seems the best place for this - granite found on the moon (so where is the water?):

"In the past, we have found some bits of granite from lunar samples taken from the Moon. However, the amount of granite in those samples has been extremely small, especially when compared to the more than 800 pounds of lunar soil and rock taken for sampling. So how is it that a huge cache of granite came to be on the Moon?"

https://bgr.com/science/researchers-found-granite-on-the-moon-and-have-no-idea-how-it-got-there/
Water? Granite is an igneous rock and (AFAIK) doesn't need water to form.
 
Water? Granite is an igneous rock and (AFAIK) doesn't need water to form.

"Despite being one of the most popular options for countertops in the world, granite has been very difficult to find anywhere else in our solar system. That’s because of how it is made. See, normally, granite needs plate tectonics or water-bearing magmas in order to form"

Didn't make that clear, sorry.
 
"Despite being one of the most popular options for countertops in the world, granite has been very difficult to find anywhere else in our solar system. That’s because of how it is made. See, normally, granite needs plate tectonics or water-bearing magmas in order to form"

Didn't make that clear, sorry.
Ah... OK. Well, all it needs is enough volcanic activity to push the magma to the surface, where it would have cooled rapidly.
It doesn't really need tectonic activity (AFAIK).
Any water, however, would have boiled away in the vacuum of space. Water sublimes immediately in a vacuum.
 


Russia's Luna-25 spacecraft crashes into Moon
Published
1 hour ago


By Aoife Walsh & Will Vernon
BBC News, in London and Moscow
Russia's unmanned Luna-25 spacecraft has crashed into the Moon after spinning out of control, officials say.

It was Russia's first Moon mission in almost 50 years.

The craft was due to be the first ever to land on the Moon's south pole, but failed after encountering problems as it moved into its pre-landing orbit.

It was set to explore a part of the Moon which scientists think could hold frozen water and precious elements.

Roscosmos, Russia's state space corporation, said on Sunday morning that it had lost contact with the Luna-25 shortly after 14:57pm (11:57 GMT) on Saturday.

Preliminary findings showed that the 800kg lander had "ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon", it said in a statement.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66562629
 
I forgot to comment before about the Indian mission that crashed onto the moon in it's planned landing area, the Southern pole.
And now the Russian one, just days later, has also crashed onto the moon in it's planned landing area, the Southern pole.
Why are these missions trying to get there anyways - Is there something going on at the moons southern pole that we aren't being told about?
 
I forgot to comment before about the Indian mission that crashed onto the moon in it's planned landing area, the Southern pole.
And now the Russian one, just days later, has also crashed onto the moon in it's planned landing area, the Southern pole.
Why are these missions trying to get there anyways - Is there something going on at the moons southern pole that we aren't being told about?
They're being shot down by the Nazi moonbase, as in the Iron Sky documentary.
Or it could just be difficult to land at the poles.
 

Chandrayaan-3 slated to land about 6pm on Wed 23rd​


:salute:
 
Ah ...
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/russias-luna-25-spacecraft-crashes-085900299.html
Erm.
This is a report that almost demands questioning.
1) Russia is currently in a very expensive war ... er ... special military operation. So if it went ahead, corners were expected to be cut.
2) The West - whose concentration on Russia and it's doings is a bit concentrated - and it's media hasn't talked about this at all.
The West has been happily reporting on it's own efforts in space, but apart from this news item - from Yahoo! of all sources - I was unaware of an attempted landing by a Russian craft, even by this robot.
 

Chandrayaan-3 slated to land about 6pm on Wed 23rd​


:salute:
I was sure I had read somewhere that it crashed but upon reflection I think they were talking about it's predecessor.
 
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