There’s a dark side of the moon that we never see due to the synchron rotation. China sent a lander and a rover to this hidden face of our satellite.
The motion of the moon and the one of our planet are now synchronised: the rotation period of the moon lasts exactly as the revolution period of the Earth.
This is the reason why we can’t see with our eyes this hidden part. The first pictures of this dark side was observed on 10th October 1959 by the Soviets during an overflight.
On Christmas Eve 1968, three American astronauts were the first ones to see directly this hidden face (Mission Apollo 8, with Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders).
From a morphological point of view the dark part has more craters than the part facing our planet because the Earth protects this side of the moon from meteorites while the other one has no protections.
We sent rovers on Mars but until the Chang-e4 mission we have never overview the hidden face of the moon, despite we took pictures of it sixty years ago. This is because on this side is impossible for astronauts or probes to communicate with Earth, until the Chinese, on May 2018, sent a probe called Queqiao, that acts as a radio bridge, to collect the information from the mission Chang-e4. The Chinese made this historic mission for different reasons.
The conquer of the moon is one of the most important goals of the space agencies of the world. Furthermore the hidden side of the moon is an unknown region and the Asian agency wants to investigate on morphological and mining aspects that will help scientists to better understand the evolution of the moon and of the solar system.
Stefano Macchia, 3 A Scientifico
