China calls launch a success as robotic spacecraft heads to moon

WENCHANG, China (Reuters) – China has hailed its pre-dawn launch on Tuesday of a robotic spacecraft to bring back rocks from the moon in the first attempt by any country to retrieve lunar surface samples from the 1970s, a mission highlighting the Chinese. ambitions in space.

Long Mars-5, China’s largest carrier rocket, took off at 4:30 a.m. Beijing time (2030 GMT Monday) in a launch from Wenchang Space Launch Center on the southern Chinese island of Hainan carrying the Chang’e-5 spacecraft. .

China’s 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 path.

The Chang’e-5 mission, named after the ancient Chinese goddess of the moon, will seek to collect lunar material to help scientists better understand the origins and formation of the moon. The mission will test China’s ability to acquire samples remotely from space, ahead of more complex missions.

State broadcaster CCTV, which ran live coverage of the launch, showed footage of AEIC personnel in blue uniforms cheering and cheering as they saw the spacecraft climbing through the atmosphere, lighting up the sky nocturnal.

If the mission goes as planned, it would make China the only third country to have collected lunar samples, joining the United States and the Soviet Union.

Upon entering lunar orbit, the spacecraft is intended to deploy a pair of vehicles on the lunar surface: a lander and an ascender. The landing is expected to take place in about eight days, according to Pei Zhaoyu, a spokesperson for the mission. The probe is expected to stay on the lunar surface for about two days, while the entire mission is expected to last about 23 days.

The plan is for the lander to pierce the lunar surface, with a robotic arm digging through soil and rocks. This material would be transferred to the tracer vehicle, which must transport it from the surface and then dock with a module in orbit.

The samples would then be transferred to a return capsule for the return trip to Earth, with a landing in China’s Inner Mongolia region.

“The biggest challenges … are the sampling work on the lunar surface, takeoff from the lunar surface, rendezvous and docking in lunar orbit, as well as the high speed re-entry to Earth” , said Pei, also director of the Space Administration’s Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center.

“We can do samples through circumlunar exploration and moon landing, but it’s more intuitive to get samples to do scientific research – the method is more straightforward,” Pei added. “In addition, there will be more instruments and more methods to study them on Earth.”

PLANS OF SPACE STATIONS

China, which made the first landing on the other side of the moon last year and launched a robotic probe to Mars in July this year, has other space goals in sight. It aims to have a permanent manned space station in service around 2022.

“Starting next year, we will carry out the launch mission of our national space station,” said Qu Yiguang, deputy commander of the Long March-5 carrier rocket.

Asked when China plans to place 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 exploration activities lunar should be carried out by a combination of man and machine. “

Matt Siegler, a researcher at the Institute of Planetary Sciences in Arizona that is not part of the Chang’e-5 mission, said the Mons Rumker volcanic region of the moon where the spacecraft is due to the earth is aged 1-2 billion years.

“It’s 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 region and others like it represented “volcanism at a advanced stage ”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 bring astronauts back to the moon by 2024, landed 12 astronauts there as part of its Apollo program on six flights from 1969 to 1972, and reported 382 kg (842 pounds) of rocks and soil.

The Soviet Union successfully deployed three robotic lunar sample return missions in the 1970s. The last, the Luna 24, collected about 170 grams (6 ounces) of samples in 1976 in an area called Mare Crisium.