{"id":3895,"date":"2018-05-31T10:35:28","date_gmt":"2018-05-31T10:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/china-launches-relay-satellite-to-explore-moons-far-side\/"},"modified":"2018-05-31T10:35:28","modified_gmt":"2018-05-31T10:35:28","slug":"china-launches-relay-satellite-to-explore-moons-far-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/china-launches-relay-satellite-to-explore-moons-far-side\/","title":{"rendered":"China Launches Relay Satellite to Explore Moon&#8217;s Far Side"},"content":{"rendered":"<p >XICHANG, May 21 (China Space News) &#8212; China launched a relay satellite early Monday to set up a communication link between Earth and the planned Chang&#8217;e-4 lunar probe that will explore the mysterious far side of Moon, which can not be seen from Earth.<\/p>\n<p >The satellite, named Queqiao (Magpie Bridge), was carried by a Long March-4C rocket that blasted off at 5:28 a.m. from southwest China&#8217;s Xichang Satellite Launch Center.<\/p>\n<p >About 25 minutes after liftoff, the satellite separated from the rocket and entered an Earth-Moon transfer orbit with the perigee at 200 km and the apogee at about 400,000 km. The solar panels and the communication antennas were unfolded.<\/p>\n<p >Queqiao is expected to enter a halo orbit around the second Lagrangian (L2) point of the Earth-Moon system, about 455,000 km from the Earth. It will be the world&#8217;s first communication satellite operating in that orbit.<\/p>\n<p >Chinese scientists and engineers hope the Queqiao satellite will form a communication bridge between controllers on Earth and the far side of the Moon where the Chang&#8217;e-4 lunar probe is expected to touch down later this year.<\/p>\n<p >Monday&#8217;s launch was the 275th mission of the Long March rocket series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>XICHANG, May 21 (China Space News) &#8212; China launched a relay satellite early Monday to set up a communication link between Earth and the planned Chang&#8217;e-4 lunar probe that will explore the mysterious far side of Moon, which can not be seen from Earth. The satellite, named Queqiao (Magpie Bridge), was carried by a Long [&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":[],"class_list":["post-3895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3895"}],"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=3895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3895\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}