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Original title: “Father of Chang’e” has something to say when Chang’e 5 “home”
[环球网军事/航空报道]The “Chang’e-5” orbiter and the return assembly carrying the previously collected lunar soil samples is currently on its way back to Earth from the Moon. When the assembly flies at an altitude of 5,000 kilometers from the earth, the Chang’e-5 orbiter, which is responsible for round-trip transportation of the earth and the moon, will separate from the returning one, and the returning one will carry only lunar soil samples for landing at the Siziwang Banner landing site in Inner Mongolia. Just as “Chang’e 5” is about to complete its first lunar “digging” mission, Academician Ouyang Ziyuan, the first chief scientist of China’s lunar exploration engineering science application and known as the “father of Chang’e, “agreed to an interview with a Global Network reporter. , A detailed interpretation of the present and future of China’s lunar exploration project.
How does the Chang’e-5 return device return to earth?
Academician Ouyang Ziyuan said that after the orbit return assembly detaches from the ascendant, it will remain in orbit around the moon for a few days, waiting for the lunar earth transfer window. After implementing the Lunar Earth transfer incident maneuver, enter the Lunar Earth transfer orbit. In order to ensure that the returner landed accurately at the designated landing field in Inner Mongolia, several intermediate corrections were required over a few flight days. The measurement, control, and recovery system accurately determined the return orbit and injected high-precision parameters into the orbiter for subsequent separation between the orbit and return AND re-entry orientation and navigation to provide waypoints. When it reaches a certain flight altitude, the orbiter releases a returner that carries lunar samples over the landing field.
At this moment, the speed of the spacecraft is as high as 10 to 12 kilometers per second (close to the speed of the second universe). If the returner is directly crashed into the atmosphere, the excessive speed will burn the returner. Academician Ouyang Ziyuan said: “We have done space experiments before, that is, as soon as it hits, if we can make it jump out of the atmosphere and then fall by itself, these have to be calculated very precisely.”
Academician Ouyang Ziyuan described this process as a boy hitting a float in the water with a stone. The stone hits the water at high speed and then bounces again. When it falls, the speed of the stone slows significantly. “We just mimicked this method, we let the return device hit a float of water in the atmosphere and then we dropped it,” said academic Ouyang Ziyuan. When the returner is close to the ground, open the parachute and land slowly.
Regarding the extraction of lunar rock and soil samples after the returnee’s landing, Academician Ouyang Ziyuan said: “If the lunar sample is exposed to the air of the earth, it will be contaminated. Therefore, after recovery and delivery , it should be packed on site and placed in a container. Fill with nitrogen, seal before shipping. “
The selection of the Chang’e 5 “Dug Earth” site is of great importance
Academician Ouyang Ziyuan said that the landing area selected by the lander and ascendant combination “Chang’e-5” is in the northwest of the stormy ocean, which is at a distance from the place where the US spacecraft from the “Apollo” series took samples from 6 lunar landings and The distances of the samples taken by the Soviet LK spacecraft on three moon landings exceeded 1,000 kilometers.
The moon has a 4.5 billion year history. Current knowledge of the moon’s history is between 4,500 and 3,000 million years ago. The soil and rocks that humans brought from the moon were basically in this time period. Previous studies have shown that there may be relatively “young” lunar rocks and lunar soils in the northwestern part of the stormy ocean. Compared to the known moon that has a history of more than 4 billion years, the time of formation of these lunar rocks and the lunar soil can be 2 billion or even 600 million years ago. This will help scientists understand the full history of the moon.
Academician Ouyang Ziyuan said: “One of the scientific goals of ‘Chang’e 5’ is to recover these lunar rocks and lunar soil, measure their age, understand the lunar environment at that time and continue the recent history of the moon.”
Academician Ouyang Ziyuan also mentioned that although the moon is just a shell and there is no energy inside it, did the energy from the moon’s core disappear 600 million years ago, 1 billion years ago, or two billion years ago? ? Now known as 3 billion years ago, this requires a scientific conclusion. Therefore, the mission of “Chang’e 5” is of special importance: to land in the northwestern part of the stormy ocean and recover the “youngest” lunar rock and lunar soil samples.
In what celestial bodies will China “dig the earth”?
With the successful experience of “digging” the moon “Chang’e 5”, will China still board other extraterrestrial objects for sampling? Academician Ouyang Ziyuan said in an interview that this is the first time China has sampled the moon. Both the United States and the Soviet Union have successfully sampled the moon. The United States has recovered 381.7 kilograms of rock and soil from the moon during six manned landings, Apollo 11. It collected 22 kilograms of lunar rock and lunar soil for the first time. The Soviet probe landed on the Moon three times and drilled and sampled a total of 0.33 kilograms. For the first time, only 0.101 kilograms of lunar samples were collected on Moon 16. China’s first sampling of the lunar surface recovered 2 kilograms of samples, but the technology is more sophisticated than when the United States and the Soviet Union landed on the moon. . These samples are very useful for scientists to understand the history of the moon.
Academician Ouyang Ziyuan said: “The next step is to take samples on Mars, and the process is similar to lunar sampling. With the experience of lunar sampling, it is also a good reference for future sampling on Mars.”
In addition, China will also collect asteroid samples on its surface when conducting an orbital exploration of the near-Earth asteroid 2016HO3.
The United States, Japan, and Europe are reported to be actively conducting extraterrestrial object surveys. Academician Ouyang Ziyuan said that China’s alien object sampling is beneficial to our understanding of the resource situation, environmental conditions, history and technical improvement of extraterrestrial objects.
Talking about whether the “Chang’e 5” will promote China’s next manned mission to the moon, academic Ouyang Ziyuan said, “The” Chang’e 5 “is currently the most complicated mission, which includes going, landing and returning. This step is the same if it is a manned moon landing, but it will bring more complicated problems and higher requirements. The ‘Chang’e 5’ has carried out some preliminary technical tests for our manned moon landing. China is now Arrangements are also being made. for various demonstrations, and further realization of the manned moon landing while samples are also needed. “
Academician Ouyang Ziyuan also said, “The ‘Chang’e 5’ has played a very good pioneering role, improved our confidence and demonstrated our technical capabilities. It is a very, very good attempt.”
