China on Monday launched its most ambitious lunar mission yet: a robotic spacecraft is expected to land on the lunar surface by the end of the week. About 4 pounds of rock and soil samples will be collected by the spacecraft and they are expected to return to Earth next month for laboratory analysis.
If successful, Chang’s 5 missions, to bring China’s rocks back to Earth, will make China only the third nation, after the United States and the former Soviet Union. He will also be the first to attempt the feat since Russia’s Luna 24 in 1976.
U.S. John Johnson-Fris, a space expert at the Naval and College Expert Ledger, told the Associated Press that China has proven itself capable of continuously developing and successfully implementing high-tech programs that are critical to regional influence and potential global engagement.
CGTN
Based on the success of two robotic moon rovers, a powerful Long March 5 rocket came alive at 4:30 a.m. ET – 3:30 p.m., local time on Tuesday, and flew past the Venchang Satellite Launch Center on Henan Island in southern China. The sea.
Television live, a heavy-lift rocket headed east and placed on a spectacular amplifier show spread across space.
Named after the mythical Chinese goddess of the moon, the 3 Chan p-Pound Change spacecraft is made up of four main components: a lunar orbit, a sample return craft, a carrier of science equipment and sample collection devices, and a small collected surface samples return. The landing vehicle landed on the lander to take it to orbit.
CCTV by Planetary Society
If all goes well, the solar-powered lander will land on the lunar surface on Friday, breaking 14 days of sunshine onto the 43-mile-wide volcanic mound known as Mons Ramekroff in the storm’s ocean.
According to The Planetary Society, the rocks and soil on the landing site are about 1.1 billion years old, much smaller than the rocks collected by Apollo astronauts.
“China is doing a great job here in terms of its first sample return mission,” Brown University geologist James Head told China’s CCTV. “We haven’t returned samples for 44 years, and we have a lot of scientific questions that the Chang5 mission will help us answer.”
“This is a really exciting opportunity, and we really appreciate China’s efforts in this area,” Head added.
The Chang5 Lander is equipped with multiple cameras, a spectrometer to evaluate ground formation near the spacecraft and ground-penetrating radar. A robotic arm is equipped with a percussive drill and scoop to select the finest rock and ground.
Working by remote control from the earth, engineers will use the hand to move the collected specimens to the climbing vehicle, which will then explode, render with a good 5 orbits and transfer the specimen to a return craft for a trip to Earth. .
Planetary Society
The landing in Inner Mongolia is expected to take place around 16 December. From there, the samples will be transferred to specially equipped laboratories for analysis.
China’s lunar exploration program began with the Changi 1 and 2 missions, which successfully reached lunar orbit in 2007 and 2010, respectively. These flights were followed by Changel lunar lander in 2013 and Changel were, which landed far away from the moon in 2019.
Two sample return missions are planned ahead of a possible mission to land Chinese astronauts in the 2030s.
“China is growing exponentially by developing building blocks for long-term use for many missions,” Fries-Johnson said, adding that the country’s “one-sided system” allows for longer political will. Which is often difficult in a democracy. “
Meanwhile, NASA is pushing ahead with it Artemis The program, which aims to land the next man and first woman on the moon in the next few years. It is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the post.
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