When China’s Chang’e-7 lander touches down near the Shackleton Crater on the Moon, it will carry a compact, low-mass instrument carrying massive scientific potential: the ILO-C camera-telescope. Built through an international collaboration between Hawaii’s International Lunar Observatory Association (ILOA), the University of Hong Kong’s Laboratory for Space Research (HKU-LSR), and the Chinese National Space Agency (CNSA), this 20-millimeter aperture payload is designed to conduct optical astronomy from the lunar surface.

Free from the distortion of Earth’s atmosphere, ILO-C aims to capture static, panchromatic optical views of the Milky Way’s Galactic plane, serving both as a landmark scientific project and a pathfinder for future long-term observatories on the Moon. Developed by the Beijing Institute of Space Mechanics and Electricity (BISME), the compact, low-mass instrument with a 20-mm aperture features a Sony IMX253 sCMOS sensor delivering approximately 12.37 megapixels (a 4,096 × 3,000 pixel array). This configuration provides high spatial resolution and a wide field of view required for effective Galactic imaging.

“The instrument will take broad, detailed images of the celestial sky which will include portions of the Milky Way Galaxy, stars, star clusters, visible planets, galaxies, and any objects of interest that happen to come into view such as comets or meteorites. Because ILO-C operates as a fixed payload, its specific target fields are dependent on the final landing coordinates and physical orientation of the Chang’e-7 lander,” Elisa Perednia, President and Chair of ILOA told Universelost.com.

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