A new chapter has been opened in lunar exploration: China's Chang'e-4 space probe landed safely on the far side of the moon on its first attempt.

According to the Chinese space agency, at 10:26 a.m. Beijing time (02:26 GMT), the device touched the lunar surface in the region of one of the largest craters in the entire solar system - the South Pole-Aitken Basin.

"This is an important milestone in Chinese space exploration," said Wu Weiren, chief designer of China's lunar program.

The probe delivered equipment to the Moon, with the help of which a number of experiments and studies will be carried out.

The first pictures from the satellite have already been sent to Earth and published by Chinese state media.

Since direct communication with the probe is not possible, all forwarded images and data are first transmitted to the relay satellite and only then get to Earth.

For the first time in history

Chang'e-4 is a Chinese automatic interplanetary station for the study of the moon and outer space. It consists of a stationary lunar station and a lunar rover.

It has built in:

• video camera;
• geological radar for studying the lunar soil;
• infrared spectrometer for the study of minerals;
• instrument for studying the effect of the solar wind on the lunar surface.

This is the first landing on the far side of the moon in history and a huge step in the study and exploration of space.

On board the lunar rover, in a sealed container, there are seeds of potatoes, rapeseed, plants of Tal's arabidopsis, and silkworm larvae. Scientists will check whether a biosystem can exist in such conditions.

In recent years, many flights have been made to the Earth's satellite. Most missions were limited to orbit, some flew past.

The last crewed landing on the moon was made by the Apollo 17 spacecraft in 1972.

The far side of the Moon is often called dark, but in reality it is that part of the lunar surface that is not visible from Earth. The Moon and the Earth rotate synchronously, so the surface of only one of the hemispheres of the satellite is visible from the Earth.

There are more craters and denser soil on the far side of the Moon.

China's plans for space

China aspires to become one of the leading space powers along with the US and Russia.

In 2017, Beijing announced the preparation of a manned expedition to the moon. China plans to start building its own space station next year and complete it by 2022.

The BBC correspondent in Beijing, John Sadworth, notes that before the successful landing of the Chang'e-4, almost nothing was known about the preparations for this mission.

China in 2003 became the third country after the USSR and the USA to independently launch a man into space.

First picture of the far side of the moon

Postage stamp issued to commemorate the event

Photomosaic of the far side of the Moon, compiled on the basis of photographs transmitted by the Zond-3 spacecraft

1 . The far side of the Moon is not visible from Earth. The period of revolution of the Moon around the Earth is equal to the period of its own rotation around its axis, therefore, it always faces the Earth with one side.

2. The famous words "dark side of the Moon" are a figurative expression. The reverse side of the Moon is not at all dark: all sides of the Earth's natural satellite are illuminated by the Sun equally.

3. For the first time, the far side of the Moon was photographed by the Soviet AMS Luna-3, launched on October 4, 1959 by the Vostok-L launch vehicle. On October 7, 1959, during a photography session, almost half of the surface of the Moon was photographed with two lenses (one third in the marginal zone, two thirds on the reverse side, invisible from Earth). The images - after developing the film on board - were transmitted by a photo-television system to Earth. The signal was received by the Simeiz Observatory in the Crimea.

4. Successful image transmission was achieved by only one method - shooting a traveling beam camera on film. However, the signal quality was poor and the noise levels were high.

5. Nevertheless, based on the materials obtained, in 1960 the first ever map of the far side of the Moon was prepared, containing hundreds of surface details. Following this, together with the Institute. Sternberg and TsNIIGAiK, the first globe of the Moon was prepared with an image of 2/3 of the surface of the reverse, invisible from the Earth, hemisphere. On August 22, 1961, the International Astronomical Union officially approved the names of the details of the relief of the far side of the Moon, given by Soviet scientists.

6. The main differences between the far side of the Moon and the one visible from the Earth are the predominance of the continental relief on it over the seas and the abundance of craters. There are only two seas here: the Sea of ​​Moscow and the Sea of ​​Dreams. However, in the list of the largest lunar craters in terms of diameter, the first nine are located precisely on the far side of the Moon.

7. Subsequently, the USSR carried out several more launches under the same program, but they were all unsuccessful. High-quality images of the far side of the Moon were obtained by the Zond-3 station, launched on July 18, 1965.

8. Despite the poor quality, the images obtained by the Luna-3 AMS provided the Soviet Union with priority in naming objects on the lunar surface. Craters and circuses of Giordano Bruno, Jules Verne, Hertz, Kurchatov, Lobachevsky, Maxwell, Mendeleev, Pasteur, Popov, Sklodowska-Curie, Zu Chongzhi, Edison and others appeared on the map.

The problem of the exploration of the Moon has been haunting physicists, gullible contemplators and skeptics for more than half a century. Recall that physicists and skeptics are those who know physics well, and gullible contemplators are those who do not know physics. Actually, on this confrontation of knowledge this long dispute is built - were the Americans on the moon or not?

A bit of history

First, a little introduction. The "flight" of Americans to the moon, as, in other matters, and spacecraft of other countries, is an ideological, and not at all a technical, problem. The modern view of the cosmos presupposes quite definite characteristics of objects visible in the sky, such that it is possible to consider that these objects can be flown on a certain spaceship. This was considered in the middle of the 20th century. Therefore, they "flew".

I described the whole mechanism of the scientific and political scam of "flying" to the moon in my novel "Moon somersault". After the spread of the biblical worldview, the moon became the target of persistent research and economic fraud, that is, a new version of Atlantis.

The first fraudster who managed to "get drunk" on the American budget was US President Eisenhower. He invented "aliens". The second fraudster was the American President John F. Kennedy. He launched the “lunar business”, in which in just a year he became the richest US president in the history of this country. For this "cut" he was executed.

Another round

And here is a new portion of firewood into this cauldron of dispute: a detailed photograph of the "back" side of the Moon appeared on the network, as the news is titled in NASA. Explanations for the short video say that the picture was allegedly composed of many images taken by the NASA DSCOVR probe on July 16, 2015. The image of the far side of the Moon was taken from a distance of 1 million miles against the Earth by the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC).

NASA also reports that the far side of the Moon against the background of the Earth was photographed from the Lagrange point L1 of the Earth-Sun system. That is, according to NASA, the probe is located at the point of the center of mass of the Earth-Sun system. According to NASA's website, the shoot took approximately five hours, between 3:50 pm and 8:45 pm EDT on July 16. The moon moves over the Pacific Ocean. The pictures show North America and then Australia.

Oddly enough, this image is the most detailed photo of the far side of the moon to date. And, recall, the first photograph of the back side of the Earth's satellite was taken by the Soviet automatic interplanetary station "Luna-3" back in 1959. Until now, for some reason, scientists have not had such a detailed picture of the entire far side of the moon. And this despite the fact that more than 60 years and billions, if not trillions, of money have been spent on the lunar program.

Here is such a sensation. Sure enough, she garnered thousands of admiring retweets from gullible onlookers. But let's approach this sensation from the position of physicists and skeptics. In the end, it is worth recalling at least that the religious character Isaac Newton, following the main biblical God, “created” the “force of gravity” and, in the best biblical traditions, called it “Divine gravity”. And the word "Divine" was later lost in the corridors of the academies.

Analysis of the flight of the moon

So that no one thinks that we are specifically attracting "by the ears" "missing" evidence of forgery, let's pay attention to the following fact. In the video, the Moon moves in the direction of the Earth's rotation, that is, from west to east. And we all know that in fact, in the earth's sky, the Moon moves in the opposite direction - from east to west.

Here, it would seem, is an obvious blunder. But there is no blooper. The moon, although it moves in the video from west to east, makes this movement slower than the rotation of the Earth, that is, it lags behind the Earth. Therefore, from the Earth it seems that the Moon goes to the west. With this simple example, we have demonstrated that the perception of the design and operation of the system depends on the position of the observers.

Rice. 1. The angle of inclination of the motion of the Moon against the background of the Earth.

From the sequence of images, we formed a complex frame (Fig. 1), which clearly shows the angle between the direction of the Moon's motion and the horizontal of the image. This angle is approximately 26.5 degrees. Recall that the Earth's axis of rotation is tilted 23.44 degrees relative to the perpendicular to its orbital plane. The inclination of the Moon relative to the ecliptic is 5.145 degrees. Approximately this geometry we see in the photo.

But this is where the coincidences between the NASA video and reality end, and the inconsistencies begin.

First discrepancy

It is known, based on the diameters of celestial bodies, the apparent size of the Earth is 3.7 times larger than the size of the Moon: the equatorial radius of the Moon is 1738.14 km; Earth - 6378.1 km.

Rice. 2. Dimensions of the Earth and the Moon.

However, in the video presented by NASA, the Earth is only 2.75 times larger than the Moon (Fig. 2). At those survey distances announced by NASA, the angular dimensions of the planet and satellite cannot give distortions that can compensate for this discrepancy.

Second discrepancy

It is known that due to the complete absence of atmosphere at the NASA probe that conducted the survey, the photographed sky is always black with all the stars of the given sector of view (photography), even when the Sun or another luminary is opposite the lens.

However, there are no stars in the NASA video (Figures 1 and 2). The same “amazing” “feature” is observed as when “shooting” the “landing” of American astronauts on the moon - then the stars in the photo also “did not turn out”. With the modern development of photographic equipment, this circumstance causes an ironic smile - technology has nothing to do with it.

And “moreover” here is only a fear of accomplices who know that from the stars captured on a fake photo it will be possible to establish the point from which the “shooting” was made, as well as the region of the sky in which the “filmed” object was located.

Third discrepancy

In the comments to the image, NASA says that the photo was taken from a distance of 1 million miles, that is, 1.6 million kilometers from the probe to the moon. Since the Moon is between the probe and the Earth in the photo, the distance from the probe to the Earth is 2.0 million kilometers.

Rice. 3. Flyby of the Moon against the background of the Earth.

In the video presented by NASA, the Moon managed to cover a distance equal to 4.5 disks of the Moon (Fig. 3). With a moon diameter of 3,474 kilometers, this distance is 15,633 kilometers.

The average orbital velocity of the Moon relative to the Earth is 1.023 km/s. Therefore, the distance measured on the video by the lunar disk, the Moon passed in 15,300 seconds. That is, the entire shooting was supposed to last 4 hours and 15 minutes. The NASA website reports that the shooting took 4 hours and 55 minutes, which is almost the same as our calculations.

Since in 24 hours the Earth makes 1 complete rotation around its own axis, then in 4 hours and 15 minutes the Earth must turn 64 degrees. And indeed, according to the signs fixed on the surface of the Earth, we see that the planet has turned by about 65 degrees.

Rice. 4. The behavior of the moon.

However, not only the Earth rotates, the Moon also rotates, as a result of which one of its sides is turned towards the Earth. The synodic period of the Moon's revolution around the Earth is 29.530588 days. That is, during the shooting, the Moon had to rotate around its axis by 2 degrees 10 minutes.

To appreciate the visual side of this phenomenon, just look at the Wikipedia page “Libration”, where the moon oscillations are clearly visible on the video: in longitude - with an amplitude of about 7 degrees 54 minutes, in latitude - with an amplitude of about 6 degrees 50 minutes.

The order of magnitude is the same as that obtained by us as a result of calculations - 2 degrees 10 minutes. However, in the video presented by NASA, the moon's wobble of 2 degrees 10 minutes was not recorded, although such an amplitude is noticeable to the observer's eye. The black dot at the top left of the satellite remains stationary throughout the video.

Fourth discrepancy

It is known that snow caps are located at the poles of the Earth. On fig. 5 compares the sweep of the map of the Earth's surface with the same part of the planet, which turned out to be recorded on the NASA video. The wide white lines in the northern and southern parts of the Earth map are the north and south poles.

Rice. 5. Visible part of the Earth's surface.

In the video, there is a northern cap of snow, but the southern one, which is larger, is not. Although the shooting was carried out in July, that is, at the height of winter in the Southern Hemisphere.

Let's also pay attention to the fact that US scientists carefully watch out for national propaganda interests (and rightly so!): Only the US territory and the ocean “appeared” on the video.

Fifth discrepancy

In the NASA video, the moon is 25 percent closer to the lens of the movie camera mounted on the probe. That is, the quality of shooting the surface of the Moon should be no worse, but a quarter better than the surface of the Earth.

Rice. 6. The quality of shooting the Earth and the Moon.

On fig. 6 shows the Earth and the Moon in the same size from the same video distributed by NASA. If the Earth is shown with high accuracy, with the slightest subtleties of atmospheric phenomena and the nuances of the continental relief. On the surface of the Earth's ocean, even the reflection of the Sun is visible - a glare in the center of the planet. Then there are absolutely no relief elements on the image of the Moon. And this despite the fact that the photographed side of the Moon is turned towards the Sun, it is sufficiently illuminated, and the absence of an atmosphere on the Moon should not interfere with obtaining clear and high-quality images.

Sixth discrepancy

In the NASA video, the Earth is shown completely illuminated. This means that the side of the Moon taken by the probe is on the side of the Sun. The view of the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun is shown in Fig. 7. The day side is the same as in the NASA photo, and the night planet glows with city lights. Moreover, the glare from the Sun, visible in the video, is located exactly in the center of the planet. This means that the probe is exactly on the line connecting the Sun and the Earth (as reported by NASA).

Rice. 7. Lighted and unlit sides of the Earth.

The moon in the video passes exactly through the center of the Earth. As is known from astronomy, the diameter of the Moon is "selected" by Nature so that at the moment of being between the Earth and the Sun, the Moon completely blocks the Sun. This phenomenon is called a solar eclipse. Recall that this NASA video was allegedly filmed on July 16, 2015. But there are only two solar eclipses in 2015: the first on March 20, the second on September 13. So with the composition of the "image" NASA failed.

In addition, at the time of a solar eclipse, the shadow of the moon passes over the earth. Since the Moon, as the author of the NASA "images" claims, is at the Lagrange point, the shadow from the Moon must pass through the center of the Earth.

Rice. 8. Shadow from the Moon on Earth during an eclipse, photograph from the ISS. The photo shows Cyprus and Turkey.

On fig. 8 shows how this phenomenon looks like in a real photograph from the ISS. The shadow from the Moon on the Earth during the eclipse is distinct and dark, its size exceeds Cyprus and covers most of Turkey.

However, there is no shadow in the NASA video, and there is also no hint of an eclipse.

Seventh discrepancy

And finally, the seventh, most striking proof of the inconsistency of the American "video" with the real circumstances of the case. To make it clear, let's start from afar. When a person considered himself the center of the world, the Earth seemed to him flat and equidistant from him in all directions. Then the Sun also revolved around the Earth. And man saw this rotation every day. This is the so-called GEO-centric model.

Then enlightenment descended on the person, and he mentally transferred the observer (that is, himself) to a new center, which he placed on the star closest to us. In such a coordinate system, the Sun became the center of the world, and the Earth began to revolve around it. Despite the obviousness of the daily path of our luminary, it has become bad form to say that the Sun revolves around the Earth. That is, a person sees one thing, and claims another. This is called "true knowledge".

But then a new model appeared, in which the solar system was inscribed in the Milky Way galaxy, which, in turn, was placed in the Universe. The center where the observer should have been moved was the Big Bang Center. In this model, it is the "true center" of the new frame of reference.

Rice. 9. Movement of the Earth and the Moon relative to the true center (the center of the Universe).

And in this reference system, without exception, all space objects move along almost parallel lines (epicycloids; see the article “The Earth does not revolve around the Sun”) around this Center of the World. Thus, in such a model, the Earth does not move around the Sun at all and the Moon does not move around the Earth. All movements are parallel (Fig. 9).

And between these parallel lines there are no Lagrange points obtained the old fashioned way from the good old HELIOcentric model. On fig. 10 shows the result of such a movement: the region of observation of the solar eclipse is marked in red. It can be seen that this region does not extend around the Earth, and in the region of the mid-Atlantic Ocean the shadow from the Moon begins to move backward.

Meanwhile, the modern concept of the world is completely different. So far, work on it is secret, although it is being carried out in many mathematical institutes of the world. The only thing that can be said is that this model is hyperbolic. Any person who knows mathematics can try to understand its essence at least from the geometry of Lorentz transformations. But that is another topic…

Riddles and secrets of the universe have long haunted people. The desire at all costs to unravel what is hidden from human eyes, pushes to make scientific discoveries, build hypotheses and search for their confirmation.

One of these secrets was the dark side of the Moon - the eternal satellite of the Earth. Few people think that the Moon is always turned to the Earth with one side. And what is there, on the other side? The first attempt by Soviet scientists to approach the surface of the moon was the launch of the Luna-1 interplanetary station in 1959. However, there was an error in the calculations, and the station did not land on the moon.

However, the lack of a result is also a result: the failure spurred scientists who were not content with just information about the absence of a significant magnetic field on the Moon. The mistake was corrected, and "Luna-2", the world's first automatic interplanetary station, ended up on the surface of the moon. In addition to research equipment, the Luna-2 station carried a pennant with the emblem of the USSR.

The third station was equipped with a photo-television installation, thanks to which it became possible on Earth to obtain pictures from the hidden side of the satellite. It was a breakthrough, another chance to wipe the nose of the Americans, who have been working in the same direction and have not yet been able to achieve success. The Soviet Union, confirming previous successes, received a reward for the hard work of scientists. Photographing the invisible side of the mysterious satellite of our planet was carried out not at the moment of closest approach, as was originally planned, but under the best lighting conditions.

The Luna-3 orientation system, which includes optical sensors, devices that respond to changes in the orientation angle, control engines, and logical electronic devices, advanced the USSR one step further. The orientation system was switched on by a signal from the Earth, and at that moment the planet under study was in the full moon phase relative to the station. With the help of sensors of the orientation system, the station "determined" the position in relation to the Sun and directed the lenses of the photographic equipment towards the Moon.

For shooting, a camera with two lenses having different focal lengths was used, the pictures were taken with different shutter speeds. In order to correlate the images with the available data, some of them combined the hidden and visible parts of the Moon. The surface of the moon was filmed using a film apparatus, the images were processed automatically at the station.

Scanned images were taken on Earth using specially designed equipment. The first images were taken by the measurement and control point, which was located near Simeiz, in the Crimea. The reserve point was in Kamchatka. The transmission of information was carried out immediately after the shooting, and then the station stopped communicating. There is an assumption that the batteries are dead, or maybe the cause of the loss of communication was the hit of a small meteorite.

What was hidden by the "dark side" of the moon?

Of course, it was not necessary to claim the high quality of the received images, the level of the equipment used did not meet the tasks set, but, nevertheless, for studying the dark side of the Moon, the transmitted images were very helpful. In particular, it became known that there are few “seas” on the hidden side of the Moon, and mountains prevail.

In addition to the "seas" - large areas filled with basalt lava, which originate on the visible side of the planet, the Sea of ​​​​Dreams and the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bMoscow were also discovered, and even then, their sizes cannot be compared with the "seas" of the opposite side. But according to the ideas of scientists studying this celestial body, the "seas" should have encircled the planet along the entire surface!

Moon exploration

Due to the fact that Soviet scientists were more active and effective, most of the objects of the lunar landscape bear the corresponding names: Gagarin, Korolev and others.

To date, a large number of photographs made up of individual images have been published on the Internet. Moreover, the Americans made a statement about finding traces of an ancient destroyed civilization on the Moon. Moreover, this civilization had a very high level of development; allegedly, the ruins of destroyed cities with stone castles and glass buildings were found. And the most amazing was the announcement of the discovery of anti-gravity technology on the moon.

The catalog of lunar anomalies was published in the second half of the last century, and since then the number of hypotheses about possible life on the Moon has been growing inexorably. The Moon is observed in telescopes with a huge zoom, an instrument that provides multiple magnification. The moon is the only planet that man has landed on. And although there are no direct contacts with aliens, there are many mysteries and conjectures on this topic. This is a wholesome food for dreamers and science fiction, while scientists, meanwhile, are looking for other benefits in the exploration of the moon.

Today, when the entire surface of the moon has been photographed and there is serious talk about the development and even colonization of the Earth's satellite. Mineral deposits have been discovered on the Moon. Helium 3 accumulates in the upper layer of soil - a rare and extremely useful isotope that can serve as fuel for thermonuclear reactors. The moon is attractive for the development of metal mining and metalworking, foundry, electronics.

In addition, the Moon has weak gravity (the Moon's gravity is six times weaker than Earth's) and the absence of an atmosphere, which opens up new horizons for scientific research. The primary tasks of the lunar scientific program may be the study of the structure of the lunar crust, the construction of assumptions and hypotheses about the origin of the solar system. The most immediate task is becoming, which will become the starting point for further study of the Moon, and who knows, maybe lunar tourism will also begin with it?