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China has sent an unmanned spacecraft on its way to the moon. This is where the spacecraft is supposed to land and bring rock samples to earth for the first time in more than 40 years. The long rocket on March 5 took off on Tuesday morning local time (Monday night CET) from the space station in Wenchang on southern China’s Hainan Island. The spacecraft, which is named after the Chinese moon goddess “Chang’e 5,” is expected to bring a so-called lander to the moon on Sunday, which will collect rocks and drill samples.
If the country were to return successfully, it would only be the third space nation, after the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s, to be successful in such a project. The spacecraft is supposed to land in the volcanic zone named after the German astronomer Karl Rümker (1788-1862). It is located in the “ocean of storms” in the upper left of the side of the moon that faces the earth.
The mission is considered to be one of the most complicated that China’s space travel has ever undertaken: for the first time, a Chinese ascent would start over from the moon, take rock samples, and perform a docking maneuver in the Earth’s satellite orbit. before the return capsule flies back to Earth.
The 8,200-kilogram spacecraft consists of four modules: the orbiter with the return capsule and the lander with the ascent stage. After landing on the lunar surface, the lander will use a long arm to collect about two kilograms of lunar rock and hole samples up to two meters deep and store them in a chamber.
I return in mid December
The spacecraft is scheduled to land in Inner Mongolia on December 16 or 17. Scientists are eagerly awaiting the samples, as no rocks from recent lunar history have yet been brought to earth for study. The “ocean of storms” is only 1.2 million years old. Moon rocks collected by the United States and the Soviet Union, on the other hand, are significantly older, at 3.1 and 4.4 million years old. The researchers hope the samples will provide important new insights into the moon’s volcanic activity and history.
“Chang’e 5” is supposed to land on the moon at dawn and stay on earth for one lunar day, two weeks. The spacecraft does not have to be equipped with special heating devices to withstand the extremely low temperatures of the moonlit night. The complexity of the three-week flight is also seen as preparation for possible manned landings in the future.
China is pursuing a space program with missions to the Moon and Mars and the construction of its own space station. In January 2019, China was the first space nation to land with “Chang’e 4” on the relatively unexplored far side of the moon. A rover has been abandoned to continue exploring the surface.
