With China's first soft landing of chang 'e-4 on the far side of the moon, humans have had the opportunity to view the mysterious land in unprecedented detail. China's self-developed longjiang ii lunar orbiter has successfully captured the same frame as the earth and sent back complete images of the moon's back side. "We've seen it before, but we've never been as excited as we are today," MIT Technology review and others have reported. "this should be the best, clearest picture ever!"
Since the scientific data and information obtained by China's chang 'e-4 mission are fully Shared with other countries, scientists around the world can get the data on the satellite at any time. This earth-moon frame image was downloaded from the Dwingeloo radio telescope center in the Netherlands. The full 16,000-byte download took about 20 minutes.
The image was so widely circulated in China that some media outlets called it "reminiscent of a famous image taken during NASA's Apollo 8 mission" -- "earth rising." Taken by NASA astronaut Bill Anders in 1968, the picture was taken during the first manned flight around the moon, as earth rose slowly from the moon. (picture below)
Longjiang 2, independently developed by China's Harbin Institute of Technology, is one of a pair of twin microsatellites with a weight of less than 45kg and a volume of about 50cm*50cm*40cm. It and longjiang 1 will enter the lunar orbit together with the relay satellite "magqiao" on May 21, 2018. The original plan of longjiang 1 and longjiang 2 microsatellites was to fly around the moon in formation, and carry out experiments such as ultra-long wave astronomical interferometry with a baseline length of 1-10 km. Unfortunately, longjiang 1 lost contact with the ground after launch, leaving only longjiang 2 functioning normally.
According to foreign media, "only one of the two microsatellites is equipped with an optical camera developed by king abdullah university of science and technology in Saudi Arabia. This means that in the future we will receive more beautiful pictures of the moon.”