[LINK] "Chang'E 2 to depart for L2 on June 16"

[rfmcdonald]

At the Planetary Society Weblog, Emily Lakdawalla reports that China's Chang'e 2 lunar exploration probe is heading for the Earth-Moon L2 point (a point which "lies on the line defined by the two large masses, beyond the smaller of the two").

According to a story posted on xinmin.xn and run through Google Translate, there's now been an official announcement from China about Chang'e 2's extended mission: it will depart lunar orbit in mid-June and journey to L2. L2 is one of the five Lagrangian points, semi-stable locations in the gravitational landscape of a two-body system; this particular one is on the far side of the Moon from Earth. The article doesn't state what business Chang'e 2 will conduct from L2. My completely-uninformed-by-fact, speculative guess is that the main purpose of the journey to L2 is to gain experience in deep-space navigation.

Reportedly Chang'e 2 will take high-resolution photos of the Moon, but few have been released so far.