The moon already has its own satellites. They sent a unique photo
The Moon already has its own artificial satellites. They sent us the first photo.
Satellites are already orbiting the Moon. The Chinese space program has the ambition to provide telecommunications and navigation services on our natural satellite. Among other things, of course. Two small experimental devices are already orbiting the Moon. They have passed the first test and we can admire its effect.
Photo of the Moon straight from the satellite
The Tiandu-1 and Tiandu-2 satellites and the Quegiao-2 communications satellite were placed in lunar orbit. They left Earth on board the Long March 8 rocket, launched on March 19. The next stage of the mission is to collect samples from the side of the Moon, which we cannot see from our planet, but for now the Chinese have carried out communication tests.
And here's the result. The equipment successfully passed the transmission test between the lunar surface and the Earth's surface. In addition, a photo of the “far” side of the Moon reached Earth. It was taken with an infrared sensor. It looks much less attractive than many other photos of our satellite, but it has a certain flavor. The distant Earth can be seen below the Silver Globe. We rarely get to see our planet from such a perspective.
Tiandu satellites entered lunar orbit on April 3, 2024. They circle the globe at a distance of 200 kilometers from each other. The Chinese Deep Space Exploration Lab has already announced further communication and navigation experiments using satellites. The results will help design the International Lunar Research Station and the Queqiao constellation of navigation and communication satellites.
