{"id":18514,"date":"2018-05-20T19:50:07","date_gmt":"2018-05-20T11:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/queqiao-takes-flight-china-launches-change-4-relay-satellite-to-moons-far-side\/"},"modified":"2018-05-20T19:50:07","modified_gmt":"2018-05-20T11:50:07","slug":"queqiao-takes-flight-china-launches-change-4-relay-satellite-to-moons-far-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/queqiao-takes-flight-china-launches-change-4-relay-satellite-to-moons-far-side\/","title":{"rendered":"Queqiao takes flight: China launches Chang\u2019e-4 relay satellite to moon\u2019s far side"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>News Brief:<\/strong> China today launched a satellite that will serve as the communications relay for a future probe on the moon\u2019s far side. The satellite, dubbed Queqiao (Chinese for \u201cMagpie Bridge\u201d), lifted off from the Xichang Launch Center in southwest China atop a Long March 4C rocket at 5:28 a.m. local time Monday (2:28 p.m. PT today), Chinese media reported. Its destination is a gravitational balance point about 33,000 miles beyond the moon, known as Earth-Moon L2. Queqiao will enter a halo orbit&nbsp;there and get ready to relay transmissions to and from China\u2019s Chang\u2019e-4 rover, which is due to launch late this year and land in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the lunar far side. Two research microsatellites, Longjiang-1 and Longjiang-2, were launched along with Queqiao.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"China launches relay satellite for Chang'e-4 lunar probe\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TC1bsPDsKgQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>News Brief: China today launched a satellite that will serve as the communications relay for a future probe on the moon\u2019s far side. The satellite, dubbed Queqiao (Chinese for \u201cMagpie Bridge\u201d), lifted off from the Xichang Launch Center in southwest China atop a Long March 4C rocket at 5:28 a.m. local time Monday (2:28 p.m. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2404,135,625,2774,20],"class_list":["post-18514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-change-4","tag-china","tag-moon","tag-queqiao","tag-satellite"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18514"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}