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According to China Aerospace News, the International Astronomical Union recently approved China's proposed naming application for eight lunar landforms near the chang'e-5 landing site. So far, there are 35 Chinese place names on the moon.
△ Naming of lunar surface landforms published by the International Astronomical Union
The 8 lunar landforms are named:
Skyship base, which represents a ship sailing in the Galaxy.
Mount Hua, named after Mount Hua in Western China.
Hengshan Mountain, named after Hengshan Mountain in southern China.
Pei Xiu was a geographer of the Western Jin Dynasty in China.
Shen Kuo was an astronomer and mathematician of the Song Dynasty in China.
Liu Hui was a Chinese mathematician of the State of Wei during the Three Kingdoms period.
Song Yingxing, a Chinese scientist of the late Ming Dynasty, was known as "China's 17th Century Craft Encyclopedia".
Xu Guangqi was a Chinese agronomist, astronomer and mathematician of the Ming Dynasty.
△ The new 8 Chinese place names
How did the moon place names come about?
Netizens commented that the ancestors could not have imagined that their names would appear in the sky after a thousand years. Today, more than 9,000 places on the moon have been named. The place name on the moon is not only for convenient positioning, but also carries the scientific and cultural memory of human beings, which records the scientists who have made outstanding contributions to the progress of human science in various countries in the world, and expresses the respect and importance of human beings for scientific culture. The map of place names on the moon is also the context map of the development of human science. So, do you know how the moon place names came about?
Ever since 1609, when Galileo observed the moon's alpine depression with a homemade telescope, scientists began naming the moon. But they all have strong personal overtones, such as Galileo naming the largest mountain range on the moon in his hometown of the Apennine Mountains. At the same time, due to the lack of communication and authority, some lunar sites have multiple names, which brings a lot of confusion. It was not until the establishment of the International Astronomical Union in 1919 that this situation of individual naming was changed. The International Astronomical Union is recognized as an authoritative astronomical academic organization in various countries around the world, with the power to name planets and moons. After decades of development and revision, the International Astronomical Union has gradually developed a set of procedures and rules for naming geographical entities of the moon.
At present, there are 18 types of landforms defined on the moon, including craters, moon streams and mountains, and different landforms have different naming methods. For example, the important geomorphological circular craters on the moon use the names of famous people such as outstanding scientists and philosophers; while the names of landforms such as Moon Creek, Moon Lake, and Moon Sea use more abstract Latin words. Among the naming rules for the moon formulated by the International Astronomical Union, there is a very special category, that is, the lunar landing site. There is no fixed naming requirement for such landforms, but it requires that the applicant have the ability to send the spacecraft to the moon. Since the first human probe landed on the moon in 1959, there have not been many such place names.
It should also be highlighted that the naming conventions developed by the International Astronomical Union exclude celebrities in a number of fields, including political and religious figures from the 19th century and beyond, as well as literary figures. There were a number of ring craters on the moon named after literary figures including Li Bai, Balzac, and Hugo, but they were removed because naming rules did not allow it. In the list of names published in 2006, Lee Baikeng was changed to Hume Z Pit.
The Chang'e-5 mission created five Chinese firsts
On November 24, 2020, the Long March 5 Yaowu carrier rocket developed by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation was successfully launched with the Chang'e 5 probe and sent into the scheduled orbit. On December 1, 2020, Chang'e 5 landed in the lunar frontal preselection landing zone. In the early morning of December 17, 2020, the Chang'e-5 returner landed on Earth with lunar samples.
△ The Chang'e-5 probe automatically samples on the lunar surface
The Chang'e-5 mission created five Chinese firsts: the first sampling and encapsulation of extraterrestrial objects; the first ignition takeoff and accurate orbiting on extraterrestrial objects; the first unmanned rendezvous docking and sample transfer in lunar orbit; the first time to carry lunar samples back at nearly the second cosmic speed; and the first to establish a storage, analysis and research system for lunar samples in China.
Producer 丨 Xu Bing
Editor-in-chief 丨Ma Weilu
Edited by 丨 Lin Xiangyu Hu Yue