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The Chinese are aiming high, except for the moon, to be exact. And I’m on the right track: an unmanned spaceship named after the Chinese moon goddess “Chang’e 5” has successfully taken off. The goal: to be the third nation after the United States and the former Soviet Union to collect rock samples. Collecting garbage wouldn’t be a bad idea either …
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 the curtains for power supply, then the commander of the control center announced the “complete success of the launch of ‘Chang’e 5′”. The spacecraft will land on Sunday in a volcanic area in the “ocean of storms” – in the upper left of the earth side of the moon.
Lunar mission: researchers hope for new knowledge
The area is “only” 1.2 billion years old. The moon rocks that the United States and the Soviet Union had collected were significantly older, at 3.1 and 4.4 billion years old. The researchers hope the samples will shed light on the moon’s volcanic activity. The US Apollo missions brought back about 380 kilos of moon rock. The Soviet Union collected 300 grams, the last with the unmanned landing “Luna 24” in 1976.
The Chinese spacecraft weighs 8,200 kilos and is made up of four modules: the orbiter with the return capsule and the lander with the ascent stage. After touching the lunar surface, the lander will use a long arm to collect two kilograms of rock and samples from wells at a depth of two meters and store them in a chamber. The campaign will last two days and is unique in China, said Peng Jing, deputy chief designer of “Chang’e 5”: “It will be very difficult!”
The moon is increasingly becoming a dump in space
Meanwhile, the moon is anything but pristine space nature: Earth’s poor satellite is partly like an interstellar garbage dump. Tools, cables and cameras, soap, towels and nail scissors – but also feces, urine containers and bags of vomit are around. Very true! Humanity left about a thousand things there: most of the mess came from the twelve Apollo astronauts who set foot on the moon from 1969 to 1972.
And some of the things out there are really bizarre: in 1969 the crew of the legendary “Apollo 11” mission left a floppy disk with “goodwill” messages “from planet earth” on top as well as a golden olive branch. Astronaut Alan Shepard struck several golf balls in 1971 to find that, thanks to the lower gravity, they were flying farther than Earth. Scientifically valuable, isn’t it? James Irwin left a Bible, a hawk’s feather and 100 banknotes for the “Apollo 15” mission.
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And then there is also the hazardous waste: the Israeli “Beresheet” spacecraft, for example, has crashed to the surface – and lies there with various other missiles that have struck intentionally or not. So one thing is certain: the man in the moon is guaranteed that this junk will not like it at all. (miri / dpa)
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