Book your ticket to happiness with Sun Express Airlines. This is a CVS I in the world. I'm John Bess with Bob Zimmerman. He keeps the website behind the black

China launching communications orbiter to the moon.

To what end, Bob?

Yes, this is another launch this week, but this was a long March 8 rocket lifting off

from China's coastal spaceport, so there were no stages dropping on anyone's head.

But they launched an important satellite.

They launched Quay, I can't pronounce this too, translates as magpie bridge too. This is a

relay satellite. They've already they've launched long previously and it goes

into lunar orbit and it's used to relay communications on used to communicate with Changi 4 and U22 on the far side of the moon.

It's still kind of an operation, but they pretty much now need to replace it.

And so this new communication satellite, it's on its way to the moon right now.

It has opened up, it's very large and tenor.

It's like, what is it, about 15 feet across.

It's very impressive. It's going to be used as the relay satellite for China's next

lunar unmanned mission to the far side of the moon, hopefully to launch in May. That's Changi Six, and that is a sample return mission.

Their second attempt to do a sample return.

The first one succeeded on the near side of the moon.

Now they're going to try to the false side of the moon and they now have a communication

satellite in place for doing this. China is basically building an infrastructure to take over

the moon and we're not at the moment. We're too busy building SLS and not getting anything accomplished.

And the theory is, Bob, communications from the moon can be maintained constantly.

There'll be no darkness behind the moon.

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