[ad_1]
Chinese officials said the Chang’e 5 mission completed drilling and sampling in a lunar lava plain on Wednesday evening, hours before the spacecraft’s robotic elevator was due to take off from the moon to begin. the return trip to Earth.
This step marked the start of the mission’s return journey, which includes an ambitious series of automated maneuvers to take off from the lunar surface on Thursday and rendezvous with an orbiter circling the moon. Chang’e 5 will attempt the very first docking between two robotic spacecraft in lunar orbit, then transfer the moon rock container to the returning craft.
If all goes as planned, the Chang’e 5 sample container is expected to reenter Earth’s atmosphere and parachute into a landing in China’s Inner Mongolia region around December 16.
Chang’e 5 completed its work on collecting samples on the Moon at around 9 a.m. EST (2 p.m. GMT) on Wednesday, according to China’s National Space Administration.
The lander landed at 10:11 a.m. EST (3:11 p.m. GMT) Tuesday in the Moon’s Oceanus Procellarum, or Ocean of Storms, region of the northern hemisphere of the moon’s near face, east of ‘a volcanic plateau named Mons Rümker.
CNSA said the lander deployed solar panels and a communications antenna after landing, then activated a panoramic camera, an instrument to analyze the structure of lunar soil, and a mineral spectrum analyzer to study the surrounding alien landscape. the spaceship.
Chinese officials said the Chang’e 5 mission completed drilling and sampling in a lunar lava plain on Wednesday evening, hours before the spacecraft’s robotic elevator was due to take off from the moon to begin. the return trip to Earth.
Full story: https://t.co/ssrWeXFwbU pic.twitter.com/6iqwyQVNdo
– Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) December 3, 2020
The data from the scientific instruments will provide a benchmark for scientists as they study the samples reported by Chang’e 5, the CNSA said in a statement.
The Chang’e 5 spacecraft completed the first phase of sample collection operations at 3:53 p.m. EST (20:53 GMT) on Tuesday, when officials said the lander had finished drilling for underground rock specimens. and sealed the material inside a return conveyor.
The next step in the mission’s two-day lunar stay was to use a shovel on the end of a robotic arm to collect material on the lunar surface. CNSA said the 7 p.m. sampling activity ended Wednesday evening Beijing time.
The spacecraft packed and sealed the lunar material in a storage device carried by the Chang’e 5 ascender, which is due to take off from the moon on Thursday, using the mission’s descent stage as a launch pad.
The CNSA also released a high-resolution panoramic image captured by a camera aboard Chang’e 5. The image shows one of the lander’s legs embedded in the soft soil on the moon, a handful of rocks resting on it. the surface and a distant cluster. of hills on the lunar horizon.
The objective of the Chang’e 5 mission was to collect more than 4 pounds, or 2 kilograms, of rocks for their return to Earth. Chinese officials have not released an estimate of how much material the spacecraft collected from the moon.
If successful, Chang’e 5 will become the first mission to recover material from the moon and bring it back to Earth since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission in 1976.
Chang’e 5 was launched on November 23 and entered orbit around the moon on November 28 before the lander detached from the mission’s orbiter and flipped the module over to begin descent maneuvers.
Chang’e 5’s successful landing on Tuesday marked the third time that China has soft-landed a spacecraft on the moon, following the Chang’e 3 mission in 2013 and Chang’e 4 in 2019. Chang’e 4 became the first spacecraft. to achieve a soft landing on the other side of the Moon, a feat made possible by the placement of a purpose-built Chinese data relay satellite in deep space.
Chang’e 3 and Chang’e 4 carried rovers to serve as mobile scouts exploring the lunar landscape. Chang’e 5’s mission to the lunar surface does not have a mobile rover, and the craft is designed to complete its job in two days in the sun, rather than surviving the super-cold two-week lunar night.
Clive Neal, a lunar scientist at the University of Notre Dame, said China has proven it can land on the moon with previous missions.
“But then they have to collect the sample,” Neal said in an interview shortly after Chang’e 5 launched. “What’s interesting is that they launch from the moon, go into orbit. lunar, then meet with the Earth re-entry vehicle which will bring this sample back to Earth safely and without compromise. When the Soviets did it in 1976, the last time it was right on Earth. They launched from the moon and came straight back to Earth. This includes an additional step, which must go well for the sample to really come back.
“But given the ability they have shown to do things for the first time, like landing and moving to the far side, I expect things to be successful, and I hope they will. will be, ”Neal said in an interview with Spaceflight Now.
“We never did a whole sample taking and sealing process,” said Peng Jing, deputy chief designer of the Chang’e 5 mission at the Chinese Academy of Space Technology, in an interview broadcast on China’s public television station CCTV. “This part of the job mainly depends on several complicated structures, including the drill … the robotic arms used to scoop up rocks and regolith on the lunar surface, and actually a high vacuum sealer designed to ensure that the ‘sample can remain intact. “
Scientists want to make sure lunar specimens are sealed for return to Earth to avoid contamination.
Another challenge will be the launch of Chang’e 5 from the lunar surface, the first takeoff from the moon since the 1970s. The ascension module must launch itself on a precise trajectory to join the module back in lunar orbit, and ground crews did not know the exact orientation of the lander on the moon’s surface until after touchdown.
“We need to accurately anticipate the location and speed of the two spacecraft flying (in) lunar orbit,” Peng told CCTV. “Because the probes don’t match in size – our winch only weighs 300 to 400 kilograms (660 to 880 pounds) when docked, while (the orbiter) weighs almost 2,000 kilograms (4,400 pounds) . Any mistake could bring down the smaller spaceship, making the docking job much more difficult than before. “
After transferring the samples to the spacecraft returning from Earth, Chang’e 5 will fire engines to exit lunar orbit and head home.
The return transporter will re-enter the atmosphere at about 25,000 mph, or 40,000 kilometers per hour, much faster than reentry from low Earth orbit.
Nine missions returned moon samples to Earth, including NASA’s six Apollo missions with astronauts and three robotic Luna spacecraft launched by the Soviet Union. NASA’s Apollo missions brought back 842 pounds (382 kilograms) of rocks from the moon.
There is evidence that the rocks in the Chang’e 5 landing zone are much younger than those returned by the Apollo astronauts. These specimens are approximately 3.5 billion years old, created during a period of active volcanism in the first billion years of the moon’s existence.
The lava plains east of Mons Rümker appear to be less affected by asteroid impacts, suggesting that the rocks may be less than 2 billion years old. But models of the moon’s evolution suggest its internal heating should have been decreasing by that time, rendering volcanoes extinct, Neal said.
“It will be exciting to see the age of these samples come back and also their actual compositions,” said Neal.
“We haven’t returned moon samples in 44 years, since Luna 24, a long time ago,” said James Head, a planetary specialist at Brown University, in an interview broadcast on the television network. Chinese CGTN. “The best way to find out more about the moon is to send back samples. This is true for any planetary body, because we can do laboratory analyzes that are far superior to what we can do remotely or in situ.
“Chinese scientists have said that samples of different ages are needed to form a complete picture of the moon,” Peng said. “Thanks to the analysis, they believe that the samples that we are going to collect in the northwest region of Oceanus Procellarum are relatively young. By combining these samples with the previous ones, we will have a better understanding of the formation and evolution of the moon.
Email the author.
Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @ StephenClark1.
[ad_2]
Source link