elon musk just exposed why china wants to explore the far side of the moon china intends to land
spacecraft near permanently shadowed regions near the moon south pole to investigate the presence
of resources trapped in craters what could be the reason let's find out hello everyone
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and his multi-billion dollar companies in today's video we'll talk about why china wants to explore
the far side of the moon and elon musk updating us all but before we begin make sure you subscribe to
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started according to musk no space mission has ever gone beyond the surface as such it is the
first opportunity to explore a mysterious region of earth's natural satellite the face never seen
from earth differs significantly from the more familiar near side the far side has a thicker
older crust that is packed with more craters on the near side there are also very few maria or
dark basaltic seas formed by lava flows food and university researchers published a paper in the
journal of deep space exploration on landing site selection in permanently shadowed regions or psrs
on the moon indicating that china's chong uh 7 mission will attempt a highly accurate fixed point
landing at a solar illuminated area such as a crater rim near the lunar south pole musk stated
the landing site will also be near a psr which can then be searched and sampled for water and
other volatiles because of their latitude and elevation psrs receive no sunlight psrs have
temperatures around minus 230 degrees celsius making them potential traps for volatile such as
water ice but also methane carbon dioxide ammonia and other gases water ice converted into drinking
water or electrolyzed to produce rocket propellant could help support human explorers on the moon
the cheung a7 mission which is expected to launch in 2024 or 2025 will consist of multiple
spacecraft including an orbiter relay satellite lander rover and many flying detector a major
mission objective is to search for water ice in a permanently shadowed region musk explained
the chongo 7 mini flying detector will conduct the psr search a primary candidate design appears
to be hexa mrl a six-legged movable repetitive lander developed by shanghai xiaotong university
the craft would then be able to perform multiple takeoffs and landings while moving around on
its six legs and sampling the lunar regolith the authors of the landing site paper combine optical
images with synthetic aperture radar or sar data acquired by nasa's lunar reconnaissance orbiter
and use high resolution digital elevation modeling to try to find flat areas within the crater
shackleton and shoemaker for landing and regular sampling by the many flying detector musk stated
insights gained from this process are then used to learn how the chong 7 orbiter's polarization
synthetic aperture radar or pole sar can be used to evaluate the topography and roughness of the
lunar surface in order to select the landing and sampling sites the microwave imaging radar would
allow for high resolution imaging of a shadowed area or optical observations are impossible
if the mission confirms the presence of stored accessible resources it could have significant
implications for lunar exploration psrs are essential because they currently contain
the biggest potential reservoirs of water and volatiles on the moon but we don't know much about
the reserve potential clive neal a lunar scientist at the university of notre dame told the report
there have been a few studies using orbital data to estimate abundances within psrs but we need
3d ground truth but we need to get in there and operate assets to understand these psrs and the
ice that's within them a flying probe or hopper is a method of obtaining point data within a psr and
the data is illuminating however rovers in these psrs are required to determine the true extent of
the ice at the surface and subsurface neil notes that investigating psrs will be difficult due to
temperature and navigation issues but adds that data from south korea's upcoming kplo mission
shadowcam will provide much needed navigational data for psr exploration musk explained neil
also mentions that any volatiles in shackleton could be kilometers away from a landing site
and down a steep 30 degree slope china is far from the only party interested in volatiles from
the lunar south pole nasa intends to launch the volatiles investigating polar exploration rover
or viper mission near the western edge of nobel crater in late 2023 given that both china and
the united states have long-term lunar plans areas containing volatiles would be highly valued making
their confirmation all the more important nasa is working on the artemis program which calls for
a permanent human presence on the moon meanwhile china and russia have announced plans to build the
international lunar research station or ilrs while initially robotic by the 2030s the station would
be capable of hosting long-term human stays on the moon musk explained so how did it start back in
2018 chong of 4 is said to have landed at the von carmen crater a 180 kilometer depression located
in the far side southern hemisphere however von carmen is located within the south pole aitken
basin a much larger hole in the moon it's the moon's oldest largest and deepest basin formed
billions of years ago with an asteroid possibly 500 kilometers across or larger collided with it
this event was so powerful that it is thought to have ripped through the moon's outer crust layer
and into the mantle one of the mission's goals is to investigate any exposed mantle material at the
landing site this would provide information about the moon's internal structure and history musk
explained indeed data from orbiting spacecraft show that the basin's composition differs from
that of the surrounding lunar highlands however exposed mantle material on the surface is only
one of several possibilities for explaining this observation the rover's panoramic camera will be
used to identify interesting locations and its visible and near-infrared imaging spectrometer
or vnis will be used to study minerals on the crater floor as well as of ejecta which are rocks
thrown out by nearby space impacts furthermore the lunar penetrating radar or lpr instrument
will be able to peer into the moon's shallow subsurface down to a depth of about a hundred
meters it could measure the thickness of the lunar regolith which is made up of broken rocks and dust
and shed light on the structure of the upper lunar crust musk stated a large amount of melted rock
would have filled the depression after the massive impact that formed the south pole aitken basin
chung 4 will be used by the science team to identify and study variations in its composition
because it is shielded from earth's radio noise the far side of the moon has long been regarded
as an ideal location for conducting a specific type of radio astronomy in the low frequency band
because of man-made radio interference and other natural factors radio astronomy observations
cannot be conducted from earth in a certain frequency band below about 10 megahertz chung 4's
lander carries a low frequency spectrometer that can conduct low frequency radio observations
it will be used in conjunction with a similar experiment on the orbiting satellite
cake chao the goals include mapping the radio sky at low frequencies and studying the sun's behavior
because the far side of the moon is shielded from electromagnetic interference from earth
it's an ideal place to research the space environment and solar bursts and the probe
can listen to the deeper reaches of the cosmos said liu tongshi of the chinese space agency
in 2016. as a result the mission will fill a void in astronomical observation allowing
scientists to study cosmic phenomena in ways never before possible from earth musk finally explained
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