Lunar flight in China has started successfully: researchers are hoping for rocks

A “Long March 5” rocket is launched on the launch pad of the Wenchang Space Launch Center. Photo: Mark Schiefelbein / AP / dpa

Keystone / AP / Mark Schiefelbein

(sda / dpa)

The spacecraft, named after the Chinese moon goddess “Chang’e 5”, will land on Earth’s satellite and bring rock samples to Earth for the first time in 44 years. The researchers are eagerly awaiting the lunar rocks, which will be significantly younger than all previous samples and thus provide new insights into the history of the moon.

With a successful comeback, China would be only the third space nation, after the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s, to succeed in such a project. With a “Long March 5” rocket, the spacecraft took off smoothly from the Wenchang space station on the southern Chinese island of Hainan on Tuesday morning local time (Monday evening CET).

An hour and a half after takeoff, the spaceship opened its curtains for power. Shortly thereafter, the commander of the control center, Zhang Xueyu, announced the “complete success of the launch of” Chang’e 5 “.” The spacecraft is expected to land on Sunday in a volcanic area named after the German astronomer Karl Rümker (1788-1862) in the “ocean of storms” – in the upper left of the Earth-facing side of the moon.

Scientific director of the American space agency NASA, Thomas Zurbuchen, congratulated China on the success of the start. “We look forward to seeing how sample collection will advance the international scientific community,” Zurbuchen wrote on Twitter. “The moon is an exciting place!” He expressed the hope that scientists from other countries could also benefit from the “value load” study.

The “ocean of storms” is only 1.2 million years old. Moon rocks collected by the United States and the Soviet Union, on the other hand, are significantly older, at 3.1 and 4.4 million years old. The researchers hope the samples will provide new insights into the moon’s volcanic activity. The US Apollo missions brought back some 380 kilograms of moon rock. The Soviet Union collected 300 grams, the latest with the unmanned “Luna 24” landing in 1976, when 170 grams of lunar dust was brought to earth.

The mission is “one of the most complex and difficult in Chinese space history,” as the state news agency Xinhua wrote. For the first time, a Chinese ascent would take off from the moon, take rock samples and perform a docking maneuver with the orbiter 200 kilometers above the lunar surface before the return capsule flies back to Earth. Such a move is so far unique to China, said Peng Jing, deputy chief designer of “Chang’e 5,” the news agency. “It will be very difficult.”

With a weight of 8,200 kilograms, the largest spaceship in the “Chang’e” fleet to date consists of four modules: the orbiter with the return capsule and the lander with the climb phase. After touching the lunar surface, the lander will use a long arm to collect about two kilograms of moon rock and samples from wells up to two meters deep and store them in a chamber. The action should last two days.

“Landing on the moon is easier than on Mars,” US space expert James Rice told Chinese state television. “But space flights are still risky.” From his point of view, the mission shows how aware China is of the importance of space travel for research and development. The flight “will lay an important foundation for China’s future manned moon landings,” said Pei Zhaoyu, deputy director of the lunar program, according to Xinhua. The spacecraft will land in Inner Mongolia on December 16 or 17.

China is carrying out an ambitious space program with missions to the Moon and Mars and the construction of its own space station. In January 2019, China landed as the first space nation with “Chang’e 4” on the relatively unexplored side of the moon. A rover was abandoned to continue exploring the surface.

The new Chinese lunar flight takes place 51 years after the first manned US moon landing on July 21, 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin were the first people to step onto the surface of Earth’s satellite. The United States has put astronauts on the moon six times. With “Apollo 17” in December 1972, the United States stopped manned moon landings.