[ad_1]
China launched an ambitious mission on Tuesday to bring back rocks and debris from the lunar surface for the first time in more than 40 years, a feat that could increase human understanding of the moon and the solar system more generally.
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 just after 4:30 am Tuesday (2030 GMT Monday, 3:30 pm EST Monday) atop a huge Long March-5Y rocket from the long Wenchang launch center the coast of the southern province of the island of Hainan.
A few minutes after takeoff, the spacecraft separated from the rocket’s first and second stages and slipped into 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.
The launch was broadcast live on national broadcaster CCTV, 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 on the moon should 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.
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 capable of successfully developing and running 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 he can collect samples and take off from the moon again.
“Consequently, I am quite 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.
Chang’e 5 and future lunar missions aim to “provide better technical support for future scientific and exploratory activities,” Pei Zhaoyu, mission spokesperson and deputy director of the Chinese Space Administration’s Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center, told reporters. .
“Scientific necessities and technical and economic conditions” will determine whether China decides to send a manned mission to the moon, said Pei, whose comments have been 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 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. .
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.
China is increasingly engaged with foreign countries on missions and the European Space Agency will provide important ground station information for Chang’e 5.
US law, however, still prevents most collaborations with NASA, barring China from partnering with the International Space Station. This prompted China to start working on its own space station and launch its own programs which put it in constant competition with Japan and India, among Asian nations seeking to achieve new heights in space.
China’s space program has progressed cautiously, with relatively few setbacks in recent years. The rocket used for the current launch failed in a previous launch attempt, but has since performed flawlessly, including the launch of Chang’e 4.
“China is working very incrementally, developing building blocks that can be used in the long term for a variety of missions,” Freese-Johnson said. China’s one-party authoritarian system also allows for “sustained political will that is often difficult in democracies,” he said.
While the US has closely followed China’s successes, it is unlikely to expand cooperation with China in the space amid political suspicion, growing military rivalry, and allegations of Chinese technology theft, experts say.
“A change in US space cooperation policy is unlikely to attract much government attention in the foreseeable future,” Johnson-Freese said.
.
[ad_2]
Source link
