ATTENTION! You are visiting a site that will soon be out of order. We invite you to the new pan.pl website instead.

Polish research instruments ready to fly to the Moon

The tests of the Polish research instruments that will travel to the Moon aboard Chinese Chang'e-4 satellite have been successfully completed. The instruments were designed and made by scientists from the Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences (SRC PAS).

In the upcoming month, the space probes will be launched toward the Moon. The aim of the experiment is to perform radio astronomy at very low frequencies. The researchers are interested in both the outermost regions of the Universe as well as the  Earth’s immediate surroundings and other bodies of the solar system. The measurements will be made from the Moon's orbit, as it guarantees the best conditions for radio astronomical observations. Particularly valuable will be data collected at the far side of the Moon (the side that faces away from Earth), which is free of man-made and natural interference from the Earth.

When constructing the instrumentation (radio signal analyzers) the Polish scientists cooperated with scientists from the National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The joint experiment is now in preparatory stage. The future mission will include several small satellites, which will help to map out the Universe during the dark ages – the early history of the Universe – when there was no light, as the stars were not born yet.

The Chinese Chang'e-4 mission is a complex undertaking that involves launch of several independent space probes. One of them will land on the surface of the Moon and place a rover on it. The second will act as a communications base station between the Earth and the Moon. The last two probes (with Polish instrumentation aboard) will be put into the Moon’s orbit to collect data on its nearest surroundings.

The works are carried out as part of the "Discovering the Sky at Longest Wavelength-Pathfinder" (DSL-P) project. The Polish-Chinese cooperation is financed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

Source: www.naukawpolsce.pap.pl