The Chinese spacecraft, which ferries over rocks cut off the surface of China, is due to land back to Earth on Wednesday and deliver the first fresh moon samples to scientists since the 1970s.
The return of the Chang5 mission is in the home stretch of the spacecraft 23-day mission that landed in November. Successfully launched on China’s most powerful rocket on the 23rd, landed on the moon on the 1st of December, collected samples, then took off again from the 3rd of December. Complete the first automatic docking between two robotic spacecraft around the bodies of other planets.
On December 3, the Changa 5’s ascending vehicle was attached to the mission’s return spacecraft, then the lunar rocky capsule was transferred back to the craft before jetting, and on December 7, it deliberately crashed.
With the completion of those steps, samples of the moon remain to be brought back to Earth.
The Chang’e 5 return spacecraft deployed thrusters to increase its orbit around the moon on Friday, then made the final departure maneuver to reach Earth at 8:51 pm EST on Saturday (0151 GMT Sunday), according to the China National Space Administration. The 22-minute maneuver with four small thrusters provided the Chang 5 return craft with the impulse needed to free itself from the lunar gravity.
The probe completed the burned course on Monday and continued to orbit the Earth on Tuesday, aiming to land in China’s Inner Mongolia region on Wednesday.
Chinese officials have not announced the exact time of the landing, but public notices instructing pilots to specify the mission’s recovery zone are available from 12:32 p.m. to 1:07 p.m. (1732-1807 GMT). Activated as far as remote landing area.
Chang 5’s return spacecraft will release a lunar rocky capsule before it enters the atmosphere.
The re-entry capsule will bounce the atmosphere in a “re-entry skip” to slow down the craft before landing, reducing its initial entry speed to 25,000 miles per hour, or 40,000 kilometers per hour, orbiting the Earth at a significant speed before re-entering. Facing the landing capsule during landing will help reduce heat, Chinese officials said, before the craft adjusts the parachute for landing.
Chinese recovery crews in Inner Mongolia are preparing for the arrival of a lunar sample, Chinese state media said Tuesday.
The Chang5 sample return mission, if successful, will mark the moon’s first round-trip flight in 44 years. It is the first lunar object on Earth since 1976, after the Soviet Union’s Robotic Luna 24 missions brought back samples of about 170 grams or 6 ounces from the lunar surface.
Nine missions have returned lunar samples to Earth, including six Apollo missions with NASA astronauts and three robotic Luna spacecraft launched by the Soviet Union. 842 pounds (382 kilograms) of rock returned from the moon by NASA’s Apollo mission.
Chinese scientists will take lunar material to a climate-controlled facility so it can begin analysis on rocks. Researchers hope to learn about the history and evolution of the moon.
The goal of the Chang 5 mission was to collect 4 pounds or 2 kilograms of rocks to return to Earth. Chinese officials have not released an estimate of how much material the spacecraft collected on the moon.
The Change Moon program is named for the Moon Goddess in Chinese folklore.
The sample return mission follows previous excerpts from China’s lunar research program. Most recently, the first successful soft landing on the far side of the moon was made in January 2019 by the Change 4 mission. Chang4 uses dedicated data relay satellites flying deep into space to bound ground teams and scientific data. Spacecraft on the lunar surface.
China’s next lunar mission, Chang 6, is similar to Chang 5. It could attempt a sample return mission to get lunar rocks from a location near the moon’s south pole around 2023.
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