China space probe returns with rare Moon rocks

BBC ^ | June 25, 2024 | Laura Bicker & Kelly Ng, in Beijing and Singapore

[Red Badger]

China's lunar probe has returned to Earth with the first ever samples from the Moon's unexplored far side.

The Chang'e-6 landed in the Inner Mongolia desert on Tuesday, after a nearly two-month long mission which was fraught with risks.

Scientists are eagerly awaiting the Chang’e-6 as the samples could answer key questions about how planets are formed.

China is the only country to have landed on the far side of the Moon, having done so before in 2019.

The far side - which faces away from Earth - is technically challenging to reach due to its distance, and its difficult terrain of giant craters and few flat surfaces. Scientists are interested in this less-explored side as it is hoped it may contain traces of ice, which can be harvested for water, oxygen, and hydrogen.

The Chang'e-6 mission is a source of pride for a nation which has stepped up its missions to the Moon - drawing attention from its rival, the US.

State media showed officials planting the Chinese flag with a flourish just after the Chang’e-6 capsule landed in the desert of Inner Mongolia.

China's President Xi Jinping has called to congratulate those at the command centre of the Chang’e-6 mission.

Mr Xi said he hopes they can carry on exploring deep space and "reaching new heights in unravelling the mysteries of the universe... to benefit humanity and advance the nation".

[bigbob]

All your moon rock are berong to us.

[wildcard_redneck]

Meanwhile Boeing is sitting on their thumbs in space while their monument to incompetence leaks helium.

[Magnum44]

Moon rocks aren't rare, not on the moon anyway.

[Magnum44]

Stupid moon rocks!!!

[Scrambler Bob]

Scientists are interested in this less-explored side
= = =

As opposed to the packed-with-tourists side.

[Red Badger]

“Nobody goes there any more. It’s too crowded”....Yogi Berra..........

[xoxox]

Yogi should be the Perpetual Poet Laureate.

[Sarcazmo]

Let’s compare them to ours. Just for fun.

[jerod]

[The Louiswu]

The hunt for useable minerals in exploitable quantities moves to the moon.

[Thorium90]

Maybe we should stop pointing fingers at China and get our own house in order.

No reason whatsoever the USA can’t be top dog for another 100 years. In everything that matters.

This should be looked at as our modern day Sputnik moment.

[LastDayz]

“...is technically challenging to reach due to its distance...”

This doesn’t make any sense as the moon is the same distance from Earth. How much further can it be to the dark side?

[Red Badger]

Part of the problem is you have to have a relay satellite in orbit around the moon in order to communicate with anything on the far side. Otherwise, you have no way of sending commands or receiving video.............

[TonyinLA]

Exactly. China did something very technologically difficult. This is not something to mock. The US stopped serious space exploration in favor of DEI/trannyism. We are going backward as our chief rivals are jumping ahead.

Could NASA, today, do the same thing? I’d doubt it, at least not for 100x’s the cost.

[rx]

The US stopped serious space exploration in favor of DEI/trannyism.

Barry announced NASA's mission would have the goal of "Muslim outreach."

I don't think we've heard much through Barry's marionette how that's going, though billions may well have been expended on laundered in its attempted implementation.

[rx]

Barry was, of course, mocking decades of corrupt NASA expenditures. He knew even then how corrupt spending had been throughout the Apollo Low Earth Orbit project once it silenced the skeptical voice of its chief critic, Gus Grissom, in the Apollo 1 pure O2 fire.

As with 9/11, since it's clear the group including Silverstein decided to "pull it" (WTC Building 7), setting off the controlled demolition charges that brought it down 20 minutes after it was already claimed by the BBC to have fallen, we also be assured that not only was Apollo 11 a Capricorn One-style staged event in an Earth-based studio, but that none of the Apollo flights actually landed on and returned from the lunar surface.

  By not calling out "our betters" on prior hoaxes, our governmentally entrenched liars were only emboldened to ever grander schemes, such as causing the $2.1T announced 9/10 to missing from Pentagon expenditures to be forever after dismissed as old news.

[Campion]

Moon landing denialism is so tiresome. The "petrified wood" story, for example ... all of the moonrocks given by NASA to foreign countries were embedded in lucite blocks and looked like this:

(I have personally seen one of these.)

So what happened? The "petrified wood" is either someone's idea of a joke, or the real sample was stolen and replaced by a counterfeit. It was apparently given personally to the Danish PM by the American ambassador, and went to the Danish national museum on the PM's death. It's fake, but it doesn't follow that all of them were fake, especially since this looks like an obvious (and poor) counterfeit.

The "pen-like" object is the OPS actuator. It didn't detach from the PLSS umbilical (rectangular box). I've seen them in black, and also in metallic:

I don't know where your white one came from. Photographic distortion, or a different suit, possibly on a different mission? Can you point me to the right-hand picture on an actual NASA photo archive site for Apollo 11?

[shotgun]

Not that rare. Biden has a head full of them...

[rx]

There is copious evidence of NASA's fakery with regard to the claimed lunar landings. It doesn't befit respectful debate or a scholarly response to be lumped together and swept away on the basis of a pejorative such as yours, that it's "so tiresome." NASA being a (DEI) "muslim outreach" more befits its activities.

Here's proof positive of photo imagery manipulation by NASA or its contractors, as seen when one merely manipulates the contrast on an original Apollo 11 image:

One dared not have any interior wall reflections being mistaken for stars that the Apollo 11 astronauts claimed they couldn't see, even though such were plainly visible to the Chinese lunar lander's camera. (Its photo #:x720-AGs-d2fefe8a-1489658296)

With regard to the mechanical mounting of the OPS actuator, one can see from your photograph that no unidirectional vertical shifting is possible relative to the structure to which it's attached, yet that's what one clearly can see as one of the differences in the two Aldrin images.

What's your authoritative source to claim all lunar material shared was encased in a rounded Lucite block?

Here's an official NASA astronaut and spokesperson giving the company's puerile response for what happened to the technology that allowed it to go to the moon and why it hasn't gone back to the moon in 40 years:

Here's the official number of that photo: AS11-40-5873.

Furthermore, there isn't enough moisture in lunar regolith to cohere as those footprints above would appear to demonstrate. Despite NASA claiming to have several kilograms of regolith, when NASA tried to demonstrate Neil Armstrong's supposed "first step" in an Apollo 11 documentary, it had to use what the video's narrator called "simulated regolith." Actual regolith, devoid of moisture, would have made footprints appear as do footprints in the desert: