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WENCHANG, China (Reuters) – China hailed its pre-dawn launch Tuesday of a robotic spaceship to bring rocks back from the moon as a success in any country’s first attempt to recover lunar surface samples since the ‘ 70, a mission that emphasizes the Chinese ambitions in space.
The Long March-5, China’s largest carrier rocket, took off at 4:30 am Beijing time (2030 GMT on Monday) in a launch from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on the southern Chinese island of Hainan carrying the Chang spacecraft. ‘e-5.
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) called the launch a success and said in a statement that the rocket flew for nearly 37 minutes before sending the spacecraft on its intended trajectory.
The Chang’e-5 mission, named after the ancient Chinese moon goddess, will seek to collect lunar material to help scientists understand more about the moon’s origins and formation. The mission will test China’s ability to remotely acquire samples from space, before more complex missions.
State broadcaster CCTV, which broadcast live coverage of the launch, showed images of CNSA personnel in blue uniforms cheering and cheering as they watched the spacecraft climb into the atmosphere, lighting up the night sky.
If the mission were completed as planned, it would make China only the third country to have recovered lunar samples, joining the United States and the Soviet Union.
Upon entering the moon’s orbit, the spacecraft is intended to deploy a pair of vehicles on the lunar surface: a lander and a blocker. The landing should take place in about eight days, according to Pei Zhaoyu, a spokesman for the mission. The probe is expected to remain on the lunar surface for about two days, while the entire mission will last about 23 days.
The plan calls for the lander to pierce the lunar surface, with a robotic arm digging through land and rocks. This material would be transferred to the blocking vehicle, which would have to carry it off the surface and then dock with an orbiting module.
The samples would then be transferred to a return capsule for the return trip to Earth, with a landing in the Inner Mongolia region of China.
“The biggest challenges … are the sampling work on the lunar surface, the take-off from the lunar surface, the rendezvous and docking in the lunar orbit, as well as the high-speed reentry to Earth,” Pei said. director of the space administration’s Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center.
“We can conduct sampling through circumlunar exploration and moon landing, but it is more intuitive to get samples to conduct scientific research – the method is more straightforward,” added Pei. “Also, there will be more tools and more methods to study them on Earth.”
PLANS OF THE SPACE STATION
China, which made its first landing on the opposite side of the moon last year and launched a robotic probe to Mars in July of this year, has other space targets in its sights. It aims to have a permanent manned space station in service around 2022.
“From next year, we will carry out the launch mission of our national space station,” said Qu Yiguang, deputy commander of the Long March-5 rocket.
Asked when China was planning to put astronauts on the moon, Pei said any decision would be based on scientific needs as well as technical and economic conditions, adding, “I think future lunar exploration activities should be carried out by a combination of man and machine. “
Matt Siegler, a research scientist at the Arizona-based Planetary Science Institute who is not part of the Chang’e-5 mission, said the volcanic area of the Mons Rumker moon where the spacecraft is expected to land is 1-2 billion. years.
“This is very young for the moon: most of our samples are 3.5 billion years old or older,” Siegler said in an email, noting that the area and others like it represented “phase volcanism. advanced “when the moon had enough internal heat for such activity.
“We want to find out what is special about these regions and why they have stayed warm longer than the rest of the moon,” Siegler added.
The United States, which currently plans to return astronauts to the moon by 2024, landed 12 astronauts there on their Apollo program over the course of six flights from 1969 to 1972 and returned 382 kg (842 lb) of rocks and soil.
The Soviet Union deployed three robotic lunar sample return missions in the 1970s. The latest, the Luna 24, recovered about 170 grams (6 ounces) of samples in 1976 from a region called Mare Crisium.
Reporting by Martin Quin Pollard; additional reporting by Ryan Woo; Written by Tom Daly; Editing by Will Dunham
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