Q UEQIAO-2, China’s relay satellite for its lunar landing missions, is set to support future moon exploration endeavours by other countries, according to the country’s Deep Space Exploration Lab.
The satellite, which supported Earth-moon communications for China’s Chang’e-6 mission that has retrieved samples from the moon’s far side, will provide relay services for lunar missions from China and other countries, the lab said on Monday.
Launched in March last year, Queqiao-2, also known as Magpie Bridge 2, is equipped with three scientific payloads — an extreme ultraviolet camera, a two-dimensional-coded energetic neutral atom-imager and an Earth-moon very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) experiment system.
The satellite has been stably operating in orbit for 14 months, performing scientific tasks including large-scale imaging of Earth’s plasma and magnetosphere layers, and VLBI experiments in the Earth-Moon system, according to the lab.
The satellite’s extreme ultraviolet camera captured the first global 83.4-nanometre ionosphere image, providing crucial data for studying the impact of solar activity on the plasmasphere.
The satellite’s VLBI experiment system, in coordination with the Shanghai 65-metre Radio Telescope, extended the observation baseline to 380,000 kilometres and successfully observed deep-space targets like radio source A00235 and the Chang’e-6 orbiter.
Xinhua
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