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Lifting scene of the Long March 5 Yaowu carrier rocket.Photo by Gao Jie / Guangming Picture
Aerospace science and technology staff work at the Wenchang launch site.Photo by Gao Jie / Guangming Picture
At 4:30 a.m. on November 24, the Chang’e-5 probe was successfully launched at the Wenchang space launch site in China. What it opened was the first return trip from China to sample alien objects, after reaching the moon, excavating the lunar soil and bringing it back to earth.
Behind this long-awaited and extremely difficult task, a group of young scientific researchers is active. With their actions they fulfilled the ardent exhortation of Secretary General Xi Jinping to “make the great dream of building a powerful aerospace country come true as soon as possible”, interpreting the true meaning of “Youth is splendid by temperance and life is sublimated by struggle. “. We invite many of them to tell stories of struggle and pay tribute to the power of youth.
Build a ladder to the moon
Narrator: Yu Zhi, Deputy Chief Designer of the Chang’e-5 Detection System Orbiter, Group of the Eighth Institute of Aerospace Science and Technology
I am very honored to participate in the third phase of the lunar exploration project, an important national project. From the beginning of the project demonstration, I went through all stages of development work after formulating the plan, developing the first sample, producing the correct sample, and entering the launch site. Seeing the Chang’e-5 probe from scratch, from a report to a plane, and then to a real object, is like watching a child grow from conception, born little by little, full of joy.
November 17th is an important day for the weapon and arrow set transfer, and I am very excited. After 7 years of development and 3 years of storage, it can be described as a decade of hard work, and seeing that it is finally about to launch, the mood is like watching a daughter get married. I have an intelligent and beautiful daughter who turns 6 this year. This time I worked at the base continuously for more than 140 days During this time, my daughter asked many times: What is Dad doing at the launch site and when will I be back? I told my daughter: Dad is building a ladder to the moon, and when he passes this ladder and brings the soil from the moon to earth, Dad will go home too.
The orbiter for which I am responsible is like a space shuttle, and its operation is related to 8 of the 11 phases of the Chang’e-5 mission. At the beginning of the mission, the orbiter will send the probe assembly into lunar orbit to separate and release the “passenger” from the lander’s ascendant assembly. After the lander’s ascendant assembly completes sampling on the lunar surface, the orbiter will “transform” into an active aircraft, meet the ascendant carrying the sample container, and transfer the sample container from the ascendant to the Regressor smoothly and reliably. . Once the sample transfer is complete, the orbiter detaches the ascendant from the docking module and returns to earth with the returner.
To successfully complete the task of transporting back and forth between the Earth and the Moon, the orbiter must be “lightweight, tightly connected, detachable, graspable, rotatable, and easy to return.” His model is quite special. The Fifth Aerospace Research Institute in Beijing is responsible for overall research and development, completes final assembly and testing in Shanghai, and then transports it to Beijing for testing. We often travel back and forth between Shanghai and Beijing, sometimes we participate in experiments in Beijing and stay there for three to five months. After returning to Shanghai, there is a lot of work to do urgently, working overtime and wearing the moon and stars is common. Many colleagues have gray hair at a young age, and we laughed and said they were heartbroken by the development of the model. The outbreak of the new corona pneumonia epidemic has brought great challenges to the project. To ensure the work of the models, when the epidemic was at its worst, we still took a shuttle bus to Beijing every week under the premise of strict prevention and control. It took us 18 hours to sit for at least a week.
In June this year, at the peak of the project, the epidemic in Beijing suddenly worsened. In order to ensure the smooth delivery of the models, we organized more than 20 elite soldiers to fall back on the premise of doing a good job in epidemic prevention work and fighting until the models officially left the factory. Among these more than 20 people there is only one colleague who came forward at a critical moment and was called the most beautiful “Chang’e” in our Eighth Hospital. All members of the test team have been fighting for more than 140 days at the launch site with full energy, completing the final state configuration of the orbiter, forming a set of four devices and completing the docking with the launch vehicle. After several tests, the orbiter was in good condition and all data was normal, and an excellent feedback was delivered to people across the country. In the future, we will continue to work hard, work hard, and do everything possible to ensure the successful completion of the third phase of the lunar exploration project.
Editor-in-charge: Yang Tenggeer, Li Guodong
