China Launches Satellite To Explore Dark Side of Moon (reuters.com)

China launched a relay satellite early on Monday designed to establish a communication link between earth and a planned lunar probe that will explore the dark side of the moon, the official Xinhua news agency said. From a report: Citing the China National Space Administration, Xinhua said the satellite was launched at 5:28 a.m. (2128 GMT Sunday) on a Long March-4C rocket from the Xichang launch center in the southwest of the country. "The launch is a key step for China to realize its goal of being the first country to send a probe to soft-land on and rove the far side of the moon," Xinhua quoted Zhang Lihua, manager of the relay satellite project, as saying.

Comments

"DARK SIDE OF THE MOON"

[Mattcelt]

"Dark" side of the moon? In this day and age, seriously?? Even the translation of China's press release correctly refers to it as the FAR side of the moon, which actually gets slightly MORE light than the near side!

Dark Side of the Moon. Ah wedding memories.

[fahrbot-bot]

My wife and I had our wedding and (self-catered) reception in our home in Dec 1989 -- described as a wedding and cocktail party on the invitations we made. We had (and I still have) a Pioneer PD-M40 6-disc CD player programmed to play the last three discs in rotation, which were George Winston. My grandfather unplugged the equipment during the ceremony and plugged it back in afterward. The player automatically plays the first disc (if present) on power up. The first three discs were Pink Floyd, with the first being Dark Side of the Moon.

Don't know if that was an omen, but we were happily together from the summer of 1985 until Jan 2006, when she died.

Remember Sue...