Chinese orbiter Chang’e-5 returns to the moon

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The China Moon Sampling Mission spacecraft continues its extended mission with its currently unknown destination.

HELSINKI – The Chang’e-5 orbiter module that facilitated the return of complex lunar samples from China last year is on its way to the moon following deep space tests.

The Orbiter, one of the four separate spacecraft of the Chang’e-5 mission, book a return module containing 1,731 kilograms of lunar samples to Earth on December 16 before firing its engines into deep space for an extended mission.

Successful Chang’e-5 orbiter later Between an orbit planned around the point of Lagrange Sun-Earth 1, about 1.5 million kilometers, in March. Here is carried out tests related to the control of the orbit and observations of the Earth and the Sun.

New data from satellite trackers now suggests that Chang’e-5 has left its orbit around Sun-Earth L1 and is intended for a lunar flight early September 9 Eastern Time.

It was noted that Chang’e-5 may have altered orbit on Aug. 30 based on observations and data from amateur satellite trackers Daniel Estevez and Scott Tilley and independent astronomy software developer Bill Gray.

The spacecraft is under the control of the Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Center (BACC), which is responsible for telemetry, tracking and command of the spacecraft. BACC has yet to provide an update on the Chang’e-5 blueprints.

Potential maneuvers such as entering a lunar orbit, heading another Sun-Earth Lagrange point or an Earth-Moon Lagrange point depend on how much thruster is left in the orbiter. Another possibility could be to use the flyover to place Chang’e-5 on an overflight path 469219 Kamo’oalewa, a quasi-satellite of Earth and the target for China 2024 close-to-Earth asteroid sample return mission.

Jing Peng, deputy chief designer of the Chang’e-5 spacecraft system at the Chinese Academy of Space Technologies (CAST), said at the Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX) in St. Petersburg, Russia, in June, that a visit to a planetary body such as Venus may not be possible due to a lack of thruster.

“I don’t think there will be a lot of opportunities for the orbiter to perform more complex in-orbit maneuvers with other bodies,” he said. “I think it will stay at Lagrange point 1 or in the Earth-Moon system”, Peng said.

Samples collected by the Chang’e-5 lander near Mons Rümker in the Oceanus Procellarum northwest of the visible face of the moon are being analyzed. Requests for material samples are now open to national and international institutions.

Nasa currently has no plans to swap any of its Apollo-era lunar samples with those returned by the Chinese Chang’e-5 mission, though the agency’s chief scientist Jim Green has expressed hopes of such an exchange in the future.

China plans return of tracking lunar sample, Chang’e-6, in 2024, theoretically part of joint China-Russia deal International lunar research station. The French space agency will bring a scientific payload to Chang’e-6.

Earlier this month, China’s Lunar and Planetary Data System provided a rare update on the ongoing Chang’e-4 lunar mission. The Yutu-2 rover has now traveled approximately 799 meters in 33 lunar days since landing in Von Kármán crater in January 2019.



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