[ad_1]
As the third largest space travel nation after the United States and the Soviet Union, China brought moon rocks to Earth for the first time. After the unmanned lunar mission, the capsule of the “Chang’e 5” spacecraft landed in the early hours of Thursday local time (Wednesday CET) with about two kilograms of lunar samples in the northern steppe of China, according to reported state television. It is the first time in 44 years that lunar rocks have returned to Earth.
Helicopter rescue teams and vehicles with powerful searchlights set out to find the capsule on the Siziwang banner in Inner Mongolia. The search is made more difficult by the dark nights and the harsh winter weather with snow, wind and temperatures of more than 20 degrees below zero. The capsule is only one-seventh the size of Chinese manned spacecraft.
Landing zone 21,000 square kilometers in size
At the same time, the landing area is 16 times larger than usual because the capsule used the method of “jump re-entry” into the Earth’s atmosphere to avoid excessive heat and damage. The elongated path is reminiscent of a bouncing stone thrown at a flat angle on the surface of the water. This makes the landing point more difficult to predict. At 21,000 square kilometers, the landing zone is almost as large as the German state of Hesse.
The mission to the moon was considered “one of the most difficult in China’s space history,” as it is officially called. “Chang’e 5” consisted of a lander and an ascent module, as well as an orbiter and the return capsule.
The oldest samples so far
As the first nation in space travel, China was able to perform a robot-controlled docking maneuver without astronauts in Earth’s satellite orbit when the ascending module reconnected to the orbiter after landing on the moon and loaded the moon rocks. The flight was also an important preparation for a manned moon landing, which China plans for the end of the decade.
Researchers eagerly await the moon rocks, which are much younger than any sample previously collected in the United States and the Soviet Union. The research could provide new insights into volcanic activity and the history of the moon.
The American Apollo missions brought with them about 380 kilograms of lunar rock. The Soviet Union collected around 300 grams with unmanned missions.
Major obstacle
The “Chang’e 5” lander landed in a volcanic area named after the German astronomer Karl Rümker (1788-1862), located in the “ocean of storms.” This region in the upper left on the side of the Moon facing Earth is only 1.2 billion years old. In contrast, the ages of lunar rocks collected by the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s are estimated to be 3.1 and 4.4 billion years ago.
With the return of “Chang-e 5”, China has overcome a major hurdle and has continued to catch up with the major space travel nations. “China is still lagging behind Europe and the United States in general, but it is making very rapid progress,” said Australian space expert Morris Jones of the German press agency. “It will soon have its own space station.”
Next stop: Mars
China is pursuing an ambitious space program with missions to the Moon and Mars and the construction of its own space station in the coming years. There are currently two projects underway: In January 2019, China was the first space nation to land with “Chang’e 4” on the relatively unexplored far side of the moon. A rover was launched and continues to explore the surface today.
The unmanned Mars probe “Tianwen-1” (Questions to Heaven) is also on its way to the “Red Planet”. As of this week, the spacecraft is more than 100 million kilometers from Earth. It is scheduled to arrive on Mars in February so that it can attempt the landing in the coming weeks, which is considered much riskier than a moon landing. Of the 18 attempts to land on Mars so far, only 10 have been successful, nine in the US alone.
The flight to China’s moon took place 51 years after America’s first manned moon landing on July 21, 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin were the first people to step on the surface of the Earth’s satellite. The United States has sent astronauts to the Moon six times. With “Apollo 17” in December 1972, the United States halted its manned moon landings.
Experiment with plant seeds
Scientists are also waiting for plant seeds that “Chang’e 5” had taken into space. These include rice, orchids, alfalfa and oats, as reported by the Xinhua news agency.
The idea is to expose the seeds to weightlessness and cosmic rays, which can trigger mutations that promise higher yields or better quality. However, according to scientists, such changes are impossible to predict and only appear after returning to the ground and subsequent cultivation. (SDA)
