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The safe landing of China’s Chang’e-5 returner on Earth with precious lunar samples was hailed as a success. But what happened to Chang’e-5’s ascendant, lander, and orbiter?
To reveal more details and stories behind the Chang’e-5 mission, CGTN spoke with Professor Yang Yuguang, vice chairman of the International Astronautical Federation’s Space Transportation Committee, during a live interview on Friday.
Click here to review the interview.
After transferring the lunar samples, the ascender used the rest of the thrusters to lower its altitude and crashed into the lunar surface.
“We inflated the ascendant to crash. This is to avoid turning it into space junk or influencing other missions in the future,” said the professor.
Similarly, after separating from the regressor, the orbiter performed an orbiter maneuver “to avoid collision with the regressor” and “was blown into the atmosphere and burned.”
Unlike the ascendant and orbiter, the lander, which finished its task after the ascendant lifted off, “will remain permanently at its landing site” north of Mons Rumker in Oceanus Procellarum, also known as the Ocean of the You storm the near side of the moon, Yang said.
Interestingly, an American robotic spacecraft orbiting the moon, known as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), has taken a photo of the lander using its high-resolution cameras, he added.
Samples collected in two ways
The professor also shared more details about the two ways Chang’e-5 collected lunar samples: drilling from below the lunar surface and collecting at the surface.
As the lunar environment is harsh, drilling and collecting, two different measurements armed with different technologies serve as back-up to each other.
“If one failed, we still had a chance with the other,” Yang explained.
In terms of scientific research, samples collected in both ways are useful in helping scientists learn about the history of the moon.
“The ground is influenced by the solar wind and also by the extremely high and low temperatures of the moon. A lot of information is corrupted. If we can drill deep beneath the surface, we can get some original examples,” Yang said.
Beneath the lunar surface, there are different layers of soil, and “the sequence of the layers is very useful information” since the different layers correspond to different times.
The solar wind also has a significant influence on the ground surface.
“Studying the influence of the solar wind and the lunar surface environment is important to Earth and useful for us to build a lunar base in the future,” Yang said.
When drilling the samples, Chang’e-5 used a two-color bar. The bottom of the stick is black and the rest is white.
“This type of design is not for good looks, but to cope with various drilling situations,” explained Yang. “We don’t know the hardness of the ground, so we have to make the stick hard enough. The black part is made of a very hard material.”
However, “every gram is valuable” so a different material is used to reduce the weight, which is the white part.
