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- Jonathan Amos
- BBC Science Correspondent
Watch the moment when the Chang’e-5 mission is launched
At 4:30 am on Tuesday (November 24), China used the Long March 5 Yaowu carrier rocket to launch the probe of the “Chang’e 5” lunar exploration project at the Wenchang space launch site in Hainan. The mission launch is trying to take samples of lunar rocks Bring back to earth. If successful, the spacecraft will return to Earth in mid-December.
More than 40 years ago, the United States and the Soviet Union brought lunar rocks and “soil” to Earth for analysis. China’s goal is to become the third country to achieve this feat. This is an extremely complex project.
The Chang’e-5 probe is made up of four parts: an orbiter, a return, a lander, and an ascendant. After successfully execute a series of lunar missions, confidence (China) should be very strong. More than a decade ago, these missions began with a few satellites.
The “Chang’e-4” probe, recently launched by China, completed its first soft landing on the back of the moon, which no space country had ever completed before.
The goal of Chang’e 5 is to zoom in on the near-Earth location of the tall Mons Rümker volcano in the Oceanus Procellarum (Oceanus Procellarum).
Image source,CNSA
This task is the prelude to the next complicated project on the moon.
According to China’s official Xinhua news agency, the scientific goals of Chang’e-5 are mainly to conduct morphological studies of the landing site area and geological background studies, obtain in situ analysis data related to lunar samples, and establish a connection. between on-site detection data and laboratory analysis data. ; Conduct long-term and systematic laboratory investigations on lunar samples, analyze the structure, physical properties, and material composition of the lunar soil, and deepen research on the origin and evolution of the moon.
Compared to the samples taken by astronauts in the US unmanned lunar probe “Apollo” and the Soviet “Lunar 3”, the rocks here are very young. Unlike rocks collected in previous missions that were 3 to 4 billion years ago, they are roughly 1.3 billion years old.
This will provide another data carrier for scientists to determine the time of the events of the solar system.
Image source,CNSA
Chang’e-4 probe completed its mission soft landing on the back of the moon.
Essentially, researchers count craters: the older the surface, the more craters; the younger the surface, the less craters.
“The moon is the timekeeper of the solar system,” explained Dr Neil Bowles of the University of Oxford in the UK. “The returned samples from Apollo and Luna 3 came from known locations on the moon. We used radiometry to determine the date very precisely. We have been able to correlate this information with the rate of fragmentation and apply the age inference to other (planetary) surfaces. Of the solar system “.
Red indicates the site of the Chang’e-5 sampling mission. Yellow represents the Apollo mission sampling location.
Dr Katie Joy from the University of Manchester in the UK said that the new samples collected by Chang’e 5 will also improve our understanding of the history of volcanoes on the moon.
“This mission was sent to an area with a history of volcanic eruptions. We want to know the exact time of the eruption,” he told the BBC. “This will inform us about the magma time and the thermal history of the moon, so that we can begin more extensively. Answer questions about when volcanoes and magma activities occur on all planets in the solar system and why the moon may linger. no energy to form volcanoes before some other celestial bodies.
After Chang’e 5 has undergone the Earth-Moon transfer, near-moon braking and circumlunar flight, the lander and ascendant will separate from the orbiter and return assembly, the orbiter will carry back to stay in orbit and the lander will carry the climb. The device selected the opportunity to implement a soft landing in the preselected area of the lunar front and carried out follow-up work, such as an automatic sampling of the lunar surface, as planned.
Image source,CNSA
The return capsule will approach Earth’s atmosphere extremely quickly.
Each stage is difficult, but it is very familiar in terms of architecture, which is very similar to the way humans used to land on the moon in the 1960s and 1970s.
China is working to achieve this goal.
“You can see the analogy between the Chang’e-5 automated probe and the human probe: the interaction between the different components of the Chang’e-5 and other probes,” said James Capone, Scientific Coordinator for Human and Robotics Exploration at the European Space Agency. Dr. James Carpenter said.
“Now we are seeing the expansion activities of various countries on the moon. There is the ‘Artemis project’ (to return astronauts to the moon) led by the United States and the association built around it; China has very ambitious explorations It plans; but there are more new entrants. “
