China launches Chang’e 5 mission to bring back material from Moon

China has launched an ambitious mission to bring rocks and debris back from the lunar surface for the first time in more than 40 years.

Chang’e 5, named after the Chinese moon goddess, is the country’s boldest lunar mission.

If successful, it would be a great advance for China’s space program, and some experts say it could pave the way for samples to return from Mars or even a manned lunar mission.

The four modules of the Chang’e 5 spacecraft took off Tuesday after 4:30 am (local time) atop a huge Long March-5Y rocket from the Wenchang Launch Center in the southern province of Hainan Island.

A few minutes after launch, the spacecraft separated from the rocket’s first and second stages and slipped into an Earth-Moon transfer orbit.

About an hour later, Chang’e 5 opened its solar panels to provide its own independent power source.

Spacecraft typically take three days to reach the moon.

An opportunity that has not been seen for over 40 years

The launch was broadcast live on national broadcaster China Central TV, which then switched to computer animation to showcase its progress in space.

The mission’s key task is to drill 2 meters below the moon’s surface and collect about 2 kilograms of rocks and other debris to return to Earth, according to NASA.

This would offer scientists the first opportunity to study freshly obtained lunar material from the American and Russian missions of the 1960s and 1970s.

The time of the Chang’e 5 lander to the moon is scheduled to be short and sweet.

There may only be one lunar day left, or about 14 Earth days, because it lacks the radioisotope heating units to withstand the freezing moon nights.

The lander will dig up the materials with its drill and robotic arm and transfer them to what is called a blocker, which will lift off the moon and dock with the service capsule.

The materials will then be moved into the return capsule to be transported to Earth.

Mission “remarkable in many ways”

The technical complexity of Chang’e 5, with its four components, makes it “remarkable in many ways,” said Joan Johnson-Freese, a space expert at US Naval War College.

“China is proving to be able to successfully develop and run sustained high-tech programs that are important for regional influence and potentially global partnerships,” he said.

In particular, the ability to collect samples from space is growing in value, said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Other countries planning to recover material from asteroids or even Mars could look to China’s experience, he said.

Although the mission is “really challenging,” McDowell said China has already landed twice on the moon with its Chang’e 3 and Chang’e 4 missions, and demonstrated with a 2014 Chang’e 5 test mission. that can return to Earth, reenter and land a capsule.

All that remains is to prove that it can collect samples and take off from the moon again.

“As a result, I’m pretty optimistic that China can do it,” he said.

The mission is among China’s boldest since it first took a man into space in 2003, becoming only the third nation to do so after the United States and Russia.

The Chinese space agency moves to new territory

Chang’e 5 and future lunar missions aim to “provide better technical support for future scientific and exploratory activities,” Pei Zhaoyu, mission spokesman and deputy director of the Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center, told reporters in a briefing on Monday. Chinese space administration.

“Scientific necessities and technical and economic conditions” will determine whether China decides to send a manned mission to the moon, said Pei, whose comments were embargoed until after launch.

“I think future exploration activities on the moon will most likely be carried out in a human-machine combination.”

While many of China’s manned spaceflight achievements, including building an experimental space station and conducting a spacewalk, mimic those of other countries from past years, CNSA is now moving to new territory.

Chang’e 4 – which nearly two years ago made the first soft landing on the relatively unexplored far side of the moon – is currently collecting comprehensive measurements of radiation exposure from the lunar surface, vital information for any country planning to send astronauts to the moon. Moon.

China in July became one of three countries to have launched a mission to Mars, in the case of China an orbiter and a rover that will search for signs of water on the red planet.

CNSA says the Tianwen 1 probe will arrive on Mars around February.

AP