Unmanned Flight – Chinese Lunar Mission Successfully Launched – News

China has successfully launched an unmanned spacecraft to the moon. 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.

With a successful comeback, China would be only the third space nation to succeed in such a project after the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s.

Disembarkation on Sunday

With a “Long March 5” rocket, the spacecraft took off smoothly from the Wenchang space station on the southern Chinese island of Hainan. An hour and a half after takeoff, the spaceship opened its curtains for power.

Spaceship weighing tons

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At 8.2 tonnes, the heaviest spaceship in the “Chang’e” fleet to date consists of four modules: the orbiter with the return capsule and the lander with the ascent 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.

Shortly thereafter, the commander of the control center announced the “complete success of the launch”. The spacecraft is scheduled to land on Sunday in a volcanic area named after the German astronomer Karl Rümker (1788-1862), located in the “ocean of storms”. Seen from earth, the region is located in the upper left of the moon.

Younger lunar rocks

The “ocean of storms” is only 1.2 million years old. The moon rocks that the United States and the Soviet Union collected decades ago, on the other hand, are significantly older than 3.1 and 4.4 million years. The researchers hope the samples will provide new insights into the moon’s volcanic activity.

The US Apollo missions brought with them a total of about 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.

Complicated space maneuver

The mission to the moon is one of the most complicated and difficult in the history of Chinese space, Chinese news agency Xinhua wrote.

China wants to go even higher

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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.

For the first time, a Chinese ascent phase will again take off from the moon, take rock samples and perform a docking maneuver with the orbiter 200 kilometers above the moon’s surface before the return capsule flies to earth. Such a move is so far unique to China.

51 years after the first manned lunar flight

The new Chinese lunar flight takes place 51 years after the first manned moon landing: On July 21, 1969, a manned US lunar module landed on Earth’s satellite for the first time.

Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin were the first to walk on the surface of the moon. Subsequently, the United States took astronauts to the moon five more times. With “Apollo 17” in December 1972, the United States stopped manned moon landings.