China launches ambitious mission to land on the moon and send samples back to Earth

China launched its most ambitious lunar mission to date on Monday: a robotic spacecraft is expected to land on the lunar surface by the end of the week. The spacecraft is expected to collect around 4 pounds of rock and soil samples and return them to Earth next month for lab analysis.

If successful, the Chang’e 5 mission will only make China the third country, after the United States and the former Soviet Union, to bring moon rocks back to Earth. It will also be the first to attempt the feat since Russia’s Luna 24 in 1976.

“China is showing itself capable of developing and carrying out sustained high-tech programs important for regional influence and potentially global partnerships,” said Joan Johnson-Freese, space expert at the US Naval War College, at the Associated Press.

Building on the success of two robotic lunar rovers, a powerful Long March 5 rocket thundered at 3:30 p.m. ET – 4:30 a.m. local time – and pulled away from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island in the South China Sea.

Televised live, the heavy-lift rocket put on a spectacular pre-dawn spectacle as it drifted eastward and rushed into space.

With Chang’e 5, China launched an effort to join the United States and the former Soviet Union in obtaining lunar samples. We hope that China will share its data with the global scientific community to improve our understanding of the Moon, as did our Apollo missions and the Artemis program. pic.twitter.com/mPjG4FE0qQ

– NASA (@NASA) November 23, 2020

The 8,335-pound Chang’e 5 spacecraft, named after the mythical Chinese goddess of the moon, is made up of four main components: a lunar orbiter, a sample return vessel, a lander carrying scientific instruments, and the sample collection equipment; and top mounted ascension vehicle to bring collected surface samples back to orbit.

If all goes well, the solar-powered lander will descend to the moon’s surface on Friday as 14 days of sunlight crash into a 43-mile-wide volcanic mound known as Mons Rümkerof in the Ocean of Storms .

The rocks and soil at the landing site are expected to be around 1.1 billion years old, much younger than the rocks collected by the Apollo astronauts, according to the Planetary Society.

“China is doing a great job here in regards to its first sample return mission,” James Head, a geologist at Brown University, told CCTV. “We haven’t returned samples for 44 years, and we have many scientific questions that the Chang’e 5 mission will help us answer.”

“This is a really exciting opportunity, and we really appreciate China’s efforts in this area,” Head added.

The Chang’e 5 lander includes several cameras, a spectrometer to assess the composition of the ground near the spacecraft, and a ground-penetrating radar. A robot arm is equipped with a hammer drill and shovel for picking up excavated rock and soil.

Working by remote control from Earth, the engineers will use the arm to move the collected samples to the ascent vehicle, which will then take off, make an appointment with the Chang’e 5 orbiter and transfer the sample to the craft. back for the journey back to Earth. .

The landing in Inner Mongolia is scheduled for around December 16. From there the samples will be transferred to specially equipped laboratories for analysis.

China’s lunar exploration program began with the Chang’e 1 and 2 missions, which successfully reached lunar orbit in 2007 and 2010 respectively. These flights were followed by the Chang’e 3 lunar lander in 2013 and by Chang’e 4, which landed on the other side of the moon in 2019.

Two examples of return missions are planned before possible Chinese astronaut landing missions on the surface in the 2030s.

“China is working in a very gradual fashion, developing building blocks for long-term use for a variety of missions,” Freese-Johnson said, adding that the country’s one-party system allows “prolonged political will which is often difficult in democracies “.

In the meantime, NASA continues its efforts Artemis program, which aims to land the next man and first woman on the moon in the next few years. It is not yet clear how this program, backed by the Trump administration, will perform under a Biden administration.