TAPAH: Communic ations Minister Datuk Fahmi Fadzil has given all telecommunication companies until 5 pm on Sunday to submit solutions to the problem of poor Internet access nationwide, or face stern action.
Fahmi said he has contacted Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) executive chairman Tan Sri Mohamad Salim Fateh Din on Sunday morning and instructed telecommunications companies involved to respond promptly to the weak coverage feedback conveyed.
“Telecommunication companies need to be more proactive in resolving this issue. When it comes to collecting overdue bills, they’re lightning fast, but when we lodge complaints, it takes months.
“So I’ve had enough. If they fail to present swift and concrete solutions by 5 pm today, MCMC will begin enforcement action against them tomorrow,” he told reporters after visiting the National Information Dissemination Centre (NADI) in Air Kuning on Sunday.
Also present were Perak Communications, Multimedia and Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) Committee chairman Mohd Azlan Helmi and Barisan Nasional candidate for the Ayer Kuning state byelection, Dr Mohamad Yusri
Bakir.
Fahmi said based on a drive test conducted by MCMC on March 5, many areas still fail to meet the Mandatory Standards on Quality of Service (MSQoS), which currently requires a minimum speed of 7.5 Mbps, which will be increased to 10 Mbps next year.
“The issue of Internet access is not only limited to Air Kuning, it is also affecting many other areas such as Belaga and Ulu Rajang in Sarawak, the new township of Serenia, the outskirts of Tambun, and even on Pangkor Island. Several Orang Asli villages have also been impacted,” he said.
He added that if the telecommunication companies failed to resolve the Internet access problem, they would face stricter enforcement measures, including hefty fines and penalties that could reach millions of ringgit.
“After we amended the Communications and Multimedia Act, which came into effect on Feb 11, fines and compounds that can be imposed on telcos will be significantly higher than before,” he said.
At the same time, Fahmi reminded netizens to be cautious when making statements or campaigning on social media, especially concerning the 3R issues (race, religion, royalty) during the Ayer Kuning byelection period.
“If there are individuals who upload extreme posts or 3R-related content, and are convicted in court, they may be fined up to RM500,000, compounded up to RM250,000, or face imprisonment. I hope all parties will conduct their campaigns in a responsible manner,” he said.
Fahmi said so far, no complaints have been received, but he expected campaign activities to pick up in the coming week.
When asked about Perikatan Nasional (PN) supporters using caricatures that seemingly mocked Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and DAP secretary-general Anthony Loke, Fahmi said he was not surprised by the approach.
“If that’s how they want to campaign, so be it. That’s their way. Let us campaign based on facts, ideas, and what we can actually offer, not just insults and ridicule,” he said.- The Borneo Post (Sabah)
With huge profits, it is time for banks and telcos to invest more in improving their infrastructure against rising criminal activities.
IT came as a huge shock to my colleague when she was saddled with a RM38,000 credit card bill – five transactions that took place in Brazil within minutes of each other, a country she had never visited in her life.
The purported expense came when she was travelling overseas. She only discovered her credit card was missing three months after the incident when the bank asked if she had her card with her.
“I was with another colleague in Hong Kong at the time. He received the same SMS alert from his bank. We both called our banks at the same time. But the difference was his bank stopped the transaction because they could not verify it,” she said.
Despite showing proof that she was in Hong Kong at the time of the transaction, her bank could not provide her with the details of the case as they did not ask the merchant for it. The minute they found out the transactions were physical, they washed off their hands and sent her a letter which indicated she was liable for the RM38,000.
“They even tried to charge a currency conversion fee, late fee and interest on the disputed transactions. Finally, after days of frustrating exchanges with the bank, I reported the case to Bank Negara, and only now the bank is reaching out to the merchant to investigate,” my colleague told me.
Sadly, her quandary is not something new. Credit card fraud is on the rise in Malaysia. But financial institutions in general argue that if a card is lost or stolen, it is still the responsibility of the cardholder if any transactions take place. But shouldn’t the onus be on the bank to at least perform due diligence on red flag transactions?
A year ago, banks under the ambit of the Association of Banks in Malaysia (ABM) and Associa-tion of Islamic Banking and Financial Institutions Malaysia (AIBIM) launched their refreshed #JanganKenaScam awareness campaign.
At that time, the associations claimed that the campaign underscored the banking industry’s commitment to combating financial scams and preventing fraudulent banking activities.
They have since implemented several security measures to fight scams, such as migrating from the SMS One-Time-Password (OTP), tightening their fraud detection rules, imposing a cooling-off period for first-time online banking registrations, restricting secure authentications to a single device, and setting up dedicated fraud hotlines for customers.
According to the two associations, these measures have successfully prevented fraudulent transactions worth RM351mil.
But combating fraudsters is a constant battle, with the banks themselves admitting that there is an upward trend and huge losses due to credit card fraud.
Over the years, The Star has published numerous articles highlighting scams and scammers and credit card fraud.
In fact, exactly 10 years ago, we published a front-page article on fraudulent credit and debit card transactions.
We wrote: “Many consumers are questioning the assurance banks give on Internet security after discovering that their credit and debit cards have been used in unauthorised online transactions.”
Ten years later, nothing seems to have changed. If anything, things have got worse.
A study by Ipsos last December revealed that an overwhelming majority of Malaysians have encountered scams, with a distressing number reporting substantial financial harm. The study indicated that scams are exploiting the digital realm, signalling a shift in criminal tactics that jeopardises our collective economic health.
Despite the additional security measures, the current national scam awareness campaign throws the entire burden of fighting scams on poor defenceless Malaysians, many of whom are retired, in their senior age, and somewhat gullible.
This is in stark contrast to what our neighbour down south has done – Singapore is holding the telcos and banks responsible for customers who have fallen prey to scams.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) says financial institutions and telcos will have to compensate their customers who have been cheated if they are found to have breached their responsibilities.
These responsibilities include failure by banks to send outgoing transaction alerts to consumers and telcos failing to implement a scam filter for SMSes.
The Singapore authorities acknowledged that “responsibility for preventing scams should not lie solely with consumers but also with industry stakeholders”, such as the financial institutions and telcos.
The shared responsibility should also apply here because banks and telcos, as the primary gatekeepers, must do more to protect Malaysians.
Financial institutions play a critical role as a gatekeeper against the outflow of monies due to scams, while telcos play a supporting role as infrastructure providers for SMSes.
They must incorporate more circuit breakers and track the enormity of the scams that are taking place. Tracking is not good enough; they must also act on it.
With Budget 2025 to be tabled next week, I hope our reform-minded Finance Minister introduces stronger and better measures to help Malaysians and demand more from banks and telcos.
Banks and telcos have amazing balance sheets with huge profits. It is time that they invest more to improve the infrastructure against scamming and fraud.
The battle over 5G network suppliers is part of a broader push by the Trump
administration to check China's rise as a global technology powerhouse.PHOTO: REUTERS
News Wrap: Huawei to develop 5G networks in Russia
https://youtu.be/Lzu4MBIzhyA
SHANGHAI/HONG KONG (REUTERS, BLOOMBERG) – China granted 5G licences to the country’s three major telecom operators and China Broadcasting Network Corp on Thursday (June 6), giving the go-ahead for full commercial deployment of the next-generation cellular network technology.
The approvals will trigger investment in the telecommunications sector which will benefit top vendors such as Huawei Technologies, just as the Chinese network equipment provider struggles to overcome a US blacklisting that has hurt its global business.
China approved four operating licences for 5G networks, setting the stage for the super-fast telecommunications system amid simmering tensions with the US over technology and trade.
The country’s three state-owned wireless carriers and China Broadcasting Network Corp were granted licences for full commercial deployment, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
The operators, China Mobile Ltd, China Telecom Corp and China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd, have been testing the technology in several cities including Beijing and Shenzhen.
Full deployment of 5G networks in a country with almost 1.6 billion wireless phone subscriptions is expected to boost local companies designing gear for applications in autonomous driving, robotics, remote surveillance and virtual reality. The faster-than-expected approvals also come as Shenzhen-based Huawei Technologies Co, the world’s largest manufacturer of networking equipment, has vowed to maintain its lead in the face of a US campaign pressuring allies not to use the company’s products.
Shares of some 5G-related companies fell in Hong Kong and Shanghai trading after the licence announcement, trimming gains made earlier in the week on expectations the companies would benefit from the push for the new networks.
China Tower Corp, the three major carriers’ infrastructure provider, fell 3% as of 10.50am in Hong Kong, paring its advance in the past four days to 9.1%. ZTE Corp, which makes handsets and telecom gear, dropped 4.3%, trimming its four-day rally to 7.1%.
Betting on the fate of the nation’s next generation of telecom networks has been one of the year’s hottest trades in China and Hong Kong. An index of telecom-related shares is up 20% this year, led by a 54% rally in ZTE’s Shenzhen-traded stock.
Beijing-based Xiaomi Corp in March said it would introduce China’s first 5G phone in May or June. Huawei and ZTE, have also said they intend to offer handsets compatible with the technology this year.
Introducing 5G will directly add 6.3 trillion yuan (US$912bil) to economic output and 8 million jobs by 2030, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology estimates. — Bloomberg
US President Donald Trump's latest confrontation with
China's telecoms giant Huawei may plunge the world into a long-term
technology “cold war,” forcing global companies to pick sides between
the US and China.
All parties suffer during the trade war, a game of
“killing 1,000 enemies while losing 800 of our own.” Many institutions
have forecast the impact of increased tariffs on China's economic growth
to be around 1 percentage point. While there is no need to panic, we
should also prepare for worst-case scenarios.
Uncertain future: In this courtroom sketch,
Meng sits beside a translator during a bail hearing in Vancouver. She
faces extradition to the US on charges of trying to evade US sanctions
on Iran. – AP
The arrest of Huawei 'heiress' has thrown a rare spotlight on the family of the reclusive smartphone giant founder, Ren Zhengfei.
WHEN Huawei CFO Sabrina Meng Wanzhou appeared on Wednesday in a Vancouver courtroom, clad in an unbranded green tracksuit, the moment was witnessed by a single reporter from the local Vancouver Sun newspaper who happened to notice her name on the hearings list that morning.
By the end of the day, Meng’s arrest in Canada at the request of Washington was the biggest story in the world.
And when her bail hearing resumed on Friday, Meng entered court to see about 100 reporters, craning to look at her through two layers of bulletproof glass.
Meng who faces extradition to the United States, was charged for helping Huawei allegedly cover up violations of US sanctions on Iran.
Like many top Chinese executives, Meng is a mysterious figure even in her home country, but the 46-year-old chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies had been widely tipped to one day take the helm of the tech giant her father founded.
That was until her shock arrest, a move that has entangled her in the protracted diplomatic tensions between Washington and Beijing.
Crucially, Meng is the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei – one of China’s leading businessmen, an ex-People’s Liberation Army officer and an elected member of the 12th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.
In other words, Meng is part of China’s elite.
Her father Ren moves in the highest government circles in China and founded Huawei in 1988, after he retired from the Chinese armed forces. Born into a rural family in a remote mountainous town in the southwestern province of Guizhou, Ren rose to the equivalent rank of a deputy regimental chief in the PLA and served until 1983, according to his official Huawei biography.
Officials in some governments, particularly the United States, have voiced concern that his company is close to the Chinese military and government. Huawei has repeatedly insisted Beijing has no influence over it.
Ren is one of the most watched entrepreneurs in China and was on Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in the world in 2005 and again in 2013.
But like his elder daughter, Ren has largely kept a low profile.
Ren has married three times. His first wife was Meng Jun, daughter of a former senior official in Sichuan province, Meng Dongbuo; she bore Ren two children: Sabrina Meng Wanzhou and a son, Meng Ping.
Meng’s current wife is Yao Ling, who gave him a younger daughter, Annabel Yao, 20. In a rare move, the three posed last month for a family photoshoot for French lifestyle magazine Paris Match. Annabel, a Harvard computer science student, became a sensation at last month’s Le Bal des Debutantes (or Crillon Ball) in Paris.
Ren’s third wife is Su Wei who, according to Chinese media reports, is a millennial who was formerly his secretary.
Interestingly, all his children opted not to take on their father’s surname – Meng adopted her mother’s surname after her parents divorced. According to Chinese news websites, Meng’s brother Ping, who also works for Huawei, followed her in taking their mother’s surname to “avoid unnecessary attention” – though the son was also known as Ren Ping in the past.
(This practice is not uncommon among the families of China’s elite. The co-founder of Chinese auction house China Guardian, Wang Yannan, opted not to take her father’s surname – she is the daughter of late Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang.)
Born in 1972, Meng joined the company in 1993, obtained a master’s degree from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 1998, and rose up the ranks over the years, mostly holding financial roles.
In her first media appearance before the Chinese press in 2013, Meng said she had first joined the company as a secretary“whose job was just to take calls”.
In the interview with China’s 21st Century Business Herald, Meng said she began her first job at China Construction Bank after graduating with her first degree in 1992.
Arrested Meng: Like her father, the Huawei CFO had led a quiet life, out of the spotlight. – Reuters
“I joined Huawei one year later because a branch closed its operations due to the business integration [of CCB],” said Meng, describing her early jobs in Huawei as “very trivial”.
Meng has served in various roles at the company since, until her latest role as the Hong Kong-based CFO of Huawei.
In 2003, Meng established Huawei’s globally unified finance organisation, with standardised structures, financial processes, financial systems, and IT platforms.
Since 2005, Meng has led the founding of five shared service centers around the world, and she was also the driver behind completion of a global payment center in Shenzhen, China. These centres have boosted Huawei’s accounting efficiency and monitoring quality, providing accounting services to sustain the company’s rapid overseas expansion.
Meng has also been in charge of the integrated financial services (IFS) transformation program, an eight-year partnership between Huawei and IBM since 2007. This has helped Huawei develop its data systems and rules for resource allocation, and improve operating efficiency and internal controls.
In recent years, Meng has focused on advancing detailed financial management at Huawei, working to align these efforts with the company’s long-term development plans.
Meng’s importance at Huawei became apparent in 2011, when she was first named as a board member. Company insiders describe her as capable and hardworking. Earlier this year, Huawei promoted Meng, to vice-chairwoman as part of a broader reshuffle. Meng is one of four executives who hold the vice-chair role, while retaining her CFO position. Despite assertions by Ren that none of his family members would succeed him in the top job, it is widely speculated that she was being groomed to take over the reins of the company eventually.
Married with a son and a daughter, Meng’s revelation that her husband did not work in the industry, dispelled the speculation she was married to a senior Huawei executive.
Meng did not conduct public interviews before 2013 and has seldom mentioned her personal life until recently, when she used her son to illustrate the importance of persistence.
“My son did not want to go swimming one day and he almost knelt on the ground and begged my husband so that he would not have to go. But he was rejected,” Meng said in a speech at Chongqing international school in 2016. “Now my son is proud to represent his school in swimming competitions.”
Meng recently made a speech at a Singapore academic conference in 2018, in which she talked of Huawei’s future role in technology development.
“Without universities, the world would be left in darkness. Without industry, science would be left in the ivory tower,” said Meng. “The fourth industrial revolution is on the horizon and artificial intelligence is one of its core enabling technologies. Huawei is lucky to be part of it.”
While her brother, Meng Ping, as well as her father’s younger brother and his current wife all work at Huawei and related companies, none has held such senior management roles.
“The other family members are in the back office, Sabrina is CFO and sits on the board,” a Huawei source said. “So she is viewed as the boss’s most likely successor.”
But her fate now is uncertain.
She faces up to 30 years’ jail for the alleged crime. Her lawyer in Canada, David Martin, had told the court that Meng posed no flight risk and should be granted bail. To flee would shame her in front of her father and all of China, said Martin.
“Her father would not recognise her. Her colleagues would hold her in contempt. She would be a pariah,” he said.
Meng leaned forward in her seat and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.
When the hearing adjourned, she was led away with her head bowed, a goldfish in a bowl that is the biggest story in the world. – South China Morning Post
Younger Huawei daughter: ‘I’m just a normal girl’
Arresting Yao: ‘My daily life is actually pretty boring compared to this.’
JUST last month, the reclusive Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei made headlines by appearing in French lifestyle magazine Paris Match with his younger daughter and current wife.
The daughter, Annabel Yao, 20, posed with a smile in front of a grand piano with her mother, identified by the magazine as Yao Ling, and Ren, who wore a blue shirt with his hand resting on her shoulder.
Suddenly, the whole family are making headlines again – even if for quite different reasons.
Few outsiders had previously heard of the younger daughter, a Harvard computer science student and ballerina. But Yao recently made a high-profile appearance at the exclusive Le Bal Debutante ball in Paris.
While Le Bal des Debutantes in Paris each year is a nod to the tradition of young society ladies entering the elite social scene of Europe, these days it courts modern debutantes, aged 16 to 21, who are chosen for their looks, brains and famous parents – prominent in business, entertainment and politics.
They parade in glamorous couture gowns, waltz with their cavaliers – young men who accompany the “debs” for the evening – and take part in photo shoots and interviews.
The schedule at the event, organised by Ophélie Renouard, is full of young women such as Baroness Ludmilla von Oppenheim, from Germany; Julia McCaw, daughter of AT&T founder Craig McCaw; and Yao – one of three debutantes chosen for the opening waltz this year.
“I definitely treated this as a debut to the world,” said Yao after the ball. “From now on, I’ll no longer be this girl living in her own world, I’ll be stepping into the adult world where I have to watch my own actions and have my actions be watched by others.”
Today’s Le Bal, is a diverse affair, a microcosm of the shifting tides of the global elite. Of the 19 debutantes of 2018, there were young ladies from India and America, Europeans from Portugal, France, Belgium and Germany, as well as Hong Kong’s Angel Lee, Kayla Uytengsu from the Philippines and China’s Yao.
Yao – who has lived in Britain, Hong Kong and Shanghai – was one of several Chinese debutantes in recent years. Hollywood offspring, such as the daughters of actors Forest Whitaker, Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone, have also become Le Bal regulars.
“All the girls were down-to-earth, easygoing, helpful and outgoing. No one was pretentious,” said Yao.
“All of them attended top universities or high schools like Stanford, Brown and Columbia, so it’s a group of girls who are privileged, but also work really hard.”
Diverse affair: Today’s ‘Le Bal’ is a microcosm of the shifting tides of the global elite like Yao (far right, front row).
As they swapped their jeans for tiaras and couture gowns and trade teenage antics for waltzing, the girls got to play fairytale princesses for three days and make their grand debut in high society.
They all arrived in Paris two days before the ball to meet, socialise with other girls and their cavaliers (Yao’s cavalier was the young Count Gaspard de Limburg-Stirum), rehearse and take part in portrait sessions.
Girls are given questionnaires about the fashion styles they like, and then choose from a selection. Yao donned a champagne gold J Mendel gown.
“An American designer with a very French style I wanted something modern,” she said. “I’m not super girlie inside, so I prefer something more chic and not so princessy It’s very elegant, and I’m not a fan of very [strongly] pigmented hues. I also loved the tulle texture of the dress, as it reminds me of a ballerina.”
“I definitely feel very honoured to be included, as there are only 19 girls in the world this year,” Yao added. “It means I have to work harder, try to accomplish great things in my life and be a role model for other girls.”
She said: “As people who have more privilege than others, it’s more important for us to help those with less opportunity. I want to get involved in philanthropy and charity I still consider myself a normal girl; it’s important for me to work hard and better myself every day.
“My daily life is actually pretty boring compared to this. I usually live like a normal student.”
Computer science is a heavy subject with a high workload, so she studies a lot. Her spare time is often taken up at the Harvard Ballet company (she’s been dancing since childhood). “I try to dance as much as possible,” she said.
A quick glance at the Ivy League student’s social media shows her jetting around the world wearing Dior, Louis Vuitton and Saint Laurent, but she’s quick to show her serious side. This summer, she did an internship at Microsoft “on a team focusing on machine learning and image recognition”.
However, she noted: “As much as I enjoy coding, I enjoy personal interactions a lot I have a passion for fashion, PR and entertainment.”
In the future, she sees herself working on the business side of technology. “I’ll try to integrate the tech knowledge I have,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll be a software engineer but maybe I’ll be more on the management side. I enjoy building connections.” – South China Morning Post
The Chinese government should seriously go behind the US
tendency to abuse legal procedures to suppress China's high-tech
enterprises. It should increase interaction with the US and exert
pressure when necessary. China has been exercising restraint, but the US
cannot act recklessly. US President Donald Trump should rein in the
hostile activities of some Americans who may imperil Sino-US relations.
In custody: A profile of Meng is displayed on a
computer at a Huawei store in Beijing. The Chinese government, speaking
through its embassy in Canada, strenuously objected to the arrest, and
demanded Meng’s immediate release. — AP
A Long March 3B rocket
launches China’s Chang'e 4 lunar probe from the Xichang Satellite Launch
Center on Dec. 7, 2018 (Dec. 8 local Chinese time). The probe is
expected to make the first-ever soft landing on the far side of the moon
in early January 2019.
Credit: Jiang Hongjing/Xinhua/Zuma
Probe on far side of moon
BEIJING: China launched a rover destined to land on the far side of the moon, a global first that would boost Beijing’s ambitions to become a space superpower, state media said.
The Chang’e-4 lunar probe mission – named after the moon goddess in Chinese mythology – launched early yesterday on a Long March 3B rocket from the south-western Xichang launch centre at 2.23am (local time), according to the official Xinhua news agency.
The blast-off marked the start of a long journey to the far side of the moon for the Chang’e-4 mission, expected to land around the New Year to carry out experiments and survey the untrodden terrain.
“Chang’e-4 is humanity’s first probe to land on and explore the far side of the moon,” said the mission’s chief commander He Rongwei of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, the main state-owned space contractor.
“This mission is also the most meaningful deep space exploration research project in the world in 2018,” He said.
Unlike the near side of the moon that is “tidally locked” and always faces the earth, and offers many flat areas to touch down on, the far side is mountainous and rugged.
It was not until 1959 that the Soviet Union captured the first images of the heavily cratered surface, uncloaking some of the mystery of the moon’s “dark side”.
No lander or rover has ever touched the surface there, positioning China as the first nation to explore the area.
China over the past 10 or 20 years has been systematically ticking off the various firsts that America and the Soviet Union did in the 1960s and 1970s in space exploration,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
“This is one of the first times they’ve done something that no one else has done before.”
It is no easy technological feat – China has been preparing for this moment for years.
A major challenge for such a mission is communicating with the robotic lander: as the far side of the moon always points away from earth, there is no direct “line of sight” for signals.
As a solution, China in May blasted the Queqiao (“Magpie Bridge”) satellite into the moon’s orbit, positioning it so it can relay data and commands between the lander and earth.
Adding to the difficulties, Chang’e-4 is being sent to the Aitken Basin in the lunar south pole region – known for its craggy and complex terrain – state media has said.
The probe is carrying six experiments from China and four from abroad.
They include low-frequency radio astronomical studies – aiming to take advantage of the lack of interference on the far side – as well as mineral and radiation tests, Xinhua cited the China National Space Administration as saying.
The experiments also involve planting potato and other seeds, according to Chinese media reports.
Beijing is pouring billions into its military-run space programme, with hopes of having a crewed space station by 2022, and of eventually sending humans to the moon. — AFP
Exploring new terrain: A Long March 3B rocket
taking off with the rover that is destined to land on the far side of
the moon. — AFP
China's robotic Chang'e 4 spacecraft streaked away from Earth today (Dec. 7), launching atop a Long March 3B rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center at about 1:23 p.m. EST (1823 GMT; 2:23 a.m. on Dec. 8 local China time).
If all goes according to plan, Chang'e 4 will make history's first landing on the lunar far side sometime in early January. The mission, which consists of a stationary lander and a rover, will perform a variety of science work and plant a flag for humanity in a region that remains largely unexplored to date. [China's Moon Missions Explained (Infographic)]
China’s Chang'e 4 lunar probe lifts off the pad at Xichang Satellite Launch Center on Dec. 7, 2018 (Dec. 8 local Chinese time).
Going where no probe has gone before
The moon is tidally locked to Earth, meaning the natural satellite
takes about the same amount of time to spin once on its axis as it does
to orbit our planet. So, here on Earth, we always see the same face of
our cosmic neighbor.
That would be the near side. The far side remains forever out of view,
and that explains why this obscured surface has yet to welcome a robotic
visitor. Communicating with a far-side lander or rover is difficult,
because the entirety of the moon's solid, rocky body would block direct
signals traveling to and fro.
The far side of the moon and distant Earth, imaged by China's Chang'e 5 T1 mission service module in
2014. The Chang'e 4 mission will launch toward the far side on Dec. 7,
2018.
Credit: Chinese Academy of Sciences To solve this problem, China launched a satellite called Queqiao this
past May. Queqiao has set up shop at the Earth-moon Lagrange point 2, a
gravitationally stable spot beyond the moon from which the satellite
will be able to relay communications between mission control and Chang'e
4.
The spacecraft's signals will likely be coming from the floor of Von Kármán Crater,
a 115-mile-wide (186 kilometers) hole in the ground that's the
mission's expected landing site. Von Kármán is part of the South
Pole-Aitken Basin, one of the biggest impact features in the solar
system; it spans a whopping 1,600 miles (2,500 km) from rim to rim.
China's Yutu moon rover, photographed by the Chang'e 3 lander in December of 2013. The lunar
far-side mission, Chang'e 4, which launched on Dec. 7, 2018, was
designed as a backup for Chang'e 3.
Credit: CASC/China Ministry of Defense
Lots of data
Chang'e 4 features a total of eight scientific instruments. The
landers' are called the Landing Camera (LCAM), the Terrain Camera
(TCAM), the Low Frequency Spectrometer (LFS), and the Lunar Lander
Neutrons and Dosimetry (LND), which was provided by Germany.
The rover sports the Panoramic Camera (PCAM), the Lunar Penetrating
Radar (LPR), the Visible and Near-Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (VNIS),
and the Advanced Small Analyzer for Neutrals (ASAN), a contribution from
Sweden.
This gear will allow Chang'e 4 to characterize its surroundings in
great detail. For example, the LFS will return data about surface
composition, while the LPR will tease out the layered structure of the
moon's subsurface.
Such information could help scientists better understand why the lunar
far side is so different from the near side. For example, huge, dark
basaltic plains called maria cover much of the near side but almost none
of the far side. (By the way, don't call the far side the "dark side";
it receives just as much sunlight as the near side.)
Chang'e 4 will also conduct some radio-astronomy work, taking advantage
of the peace and quiet on the far side, which is shielded from the
radio chatter coming from Earth. Queqiao is collecting astronomy data as
well, using an onboard instrument called the Netherlands-China Low-Frequency Explorer.
The spacecraft carries a biological experiment as well: a small tin containing silkworm eggs and seeds of tomato and Arabidopsis plants. Researchers will keep tabs on how these organisms live and develop on the lunar surface. [Moon Master: An Easy Quiz for Lunatics]
March to the moon
Chang'e 4 marks the latest step in China's ambitious, long-term moon-exploration strategy.
The nation launched the Chang'e 1 and Chang'e 2 spacecraft to lunar
orbit in 2007 and 2010, respectively. In December 2013, Chang'e 3 put a lander and a rover named Yutu down
on the moon's near side. (Chang'e 4 was originally developed as a
backup to Chang'e 3 but was repurposed after the latter's success.)
And in October 2014, China launched Chang'e 5T1, which sent a test
capsule on an eight-day trip around the moon that ended in a parachute-aided touchdown here on Earth.
All of this is leading up to the Chang'e 5 sample-return mission, which
could launch toward the near side as early as next year. (The nation's
line of robotic lunar missions is named after Chang'e, a moon goddess in
Chinese mythology.)
And then there's the crewed side of things. Chinese officials have said
they want to land people on the lunar surface, though the timeline for
this goal is unclear. The moon is not China's human-spaceflight focus in
the near term; the country is working to get a crewed space station up
and running in Earth orbit by the early 2020s.
China’s Chang'e 4 lunar probe lifts off the pad at Xichang Satellite Launch Center on Dec. 7, 2018 (Dec. 8 local Chinese time).
