BEIJING (AP) – China on Thursday said its latest lunar probe has finished taking samples of the moon’s surface and sealed the inside of the spacecraft to return to Earth, the first such attempt by any country in more than 40 years.
Chang 5, the third Chinese probe into landing on the moon, is the latest in a series of increasingly ambitious missions for Beijing’s space program, including an investigation into the route to Mars with a robotic rover.
Chang 5 touched down on a sea of storms near the moon on Tuesday, the first time since 1976 that the moon touched the rocks on a mission to return to Earth.
The investigation has “completed sampling on the moon, and the samples inside the spacecraft have been sealed,” the China National Space Administration said in a statement.
Plans are called for the upper phase of the probe, known as the unveiling back into lunar orbit, to transfer the samples back to Earth into capsules. The time of his return was not immediately clear, and the plundering temperature would make him unforgivable before Lander could last a lunar day, or 14 days on Earth.
Chang is equipped with both scoop specimens from the surface and drills 2 meters (over 6 feet) to obtain material that could indicate the history of the moon, other planets on Earth, and space features.
While its main function is to obtain samples, the lander is also equipped to photograph the area around its landing site in detail, to map the conditions below the ground’s radar surface and to analyze the lunar soil for minerals and water content.
The Changa 5 return module will touch the grasslands of Inner Mongolia in mid-December, where they received their compensation after a man was put into space by a Chinese crew Shenzo spacecraft in 2003, becoming only the third country. Do the same after Russia and the United States.
Chang5 has once again turned to China’s discussion of sending a crew mission to China and possibly building a scientific base there, although no timeline has been set for such projects.
China also launched its first temporary orbital laboratory in 2011 and the second in 2016.
While China is increasing cooperation with the European Space Agency and others, its interaction with NASA is severely limited by concerns about the secret nature and close military links of the Chinese program.
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