NASA Photographs Chang'e-6 Landing Site on the Moon's Far Side

TapTechNews on June 19, NASA's official website posted that its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) photographed the landing site of China's Chang'e-6 lunar probe on the far side of the moon on June 7.

The LRO team said that the increase in the brightness of the terrain around the Chang'e-6 lander was due to the violent ejection when the lander's engine started, blowing away the nearby lunar dust, which is similar to the situation around other lunar landers.

The landing site coordinates calculated by the LRO team are approximately 42 degrees south latitude and 206 degrees east longitude, with an altitude of approximately -3.27 miles (TapTechNews note: about -5.26 kilometers). NASA also provided a previous photo of this location to contrast and show the changes before and after the landing of Chang'e-6.

NASA provided the regional background map of the Chang'e-6 landing site, and the color difference was enhanced for improved clarity. The dark areas are basalt mare deposits, and the bluer areas in the mare are high-titanium flows. The superimposed contour lines mark elevation intervals of 100 meters to provide a sense of terrain.

According to TapTechNews' previous reporting, since the Chang'e-6 probe was launched into orbit on May 3, 2024, it has successively gone through processes such as earth-moon transfer, near-moon braking, circumlunar flight, and landing descent. It successfully landed on the far side of the moon in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on June 2 and took off from the far side of the moon with lunar samples on June 4. This is the first manned mission to sample and return from the far side of the moon.