China’s successful landing on the far side of the moon is a part of lunar history

XICHANG, China – Humankind first laid eyes on the far side of the moon in 1968. “The backside looks like a sand pile my kids have been playing in for a long time,” the astronaut Bill Anders told NASA mission control. For millennia, people had gazed up at the same view of the Earth’s companion—the same craters, cracks, and fissures. As the Apollo spacecraft floated over the unfamiliar lunar surface, Anders described the new territory, which promised to be a tough landing for anyone who tried. “It’s all beat up, no definition,” he said. “Just a lot of bumps and holes.” Fifty years later, humankind landed in the sand pile, wrote Marina Koren for The Atlantic on Thursday.

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The Intelligent Aerospace take:

January 4, 2019 -Koren's piece provides excellent context into the geopolitical history of lunar missions - manned and unmanned - as well a bit of Cold War space exploration history. She also covered China's past ambitions as well as its, pardon the pun, rocket-fueled rise in the aerospace world, as the Asian giant positions itself into a giant of space, as well.

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Jamie Whitney, Associate Editor
Intelligent Aerospace

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