China in final preparations for latest lunar mission
- by Lorene Schwartz
- in People
- — Nov 24, 2020
If successful, China will be only the third country to have retrieved samples from the moon, following the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and '70s.
Once in the Moon's orbit, the probe will aim to deploy a pair of vehicles to the surface: a lander will drill into the ground, then transfer its soil and rock samples onto an ascending one that is closed and docked with a orbiting module.
While China has sent prior missions to the moon - including Chang'e-4, which became the first craft to soft land on the dark side of the Moon in 2019 - returning the samples is more technically complicated than those and will require the CNSA to demonstrate they have mastered a number of engineering problems ranging from heat control to Lunar launching.
The Chang'e-5 probe, named after the ancient Chinese goddess of the moon, will seek to collect material that can help scientists understand more about the Moon's origins and formation. The samples will mostly be stored at the Chinese Academy of Sciences National Astronomical Observatory of China in Beijing.
A motorcyclist passes a model of Earth at a space science museum in Wenchang, China, yesterday.
The last mission of its kind, Luna 24, was by the Soviet Union in 1976.
The Soviet Union deployed three profitable robotic pattern return missions within the 1970s.
The lander is scheduled to touch down in an area called Oceanus Procellarum and stay on the moon for only as long as one lunar day - the equivalent of around two weeks on Earth.
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"The Apollo Luna sample region of the Moon, although important for our understanding, was made in a region that includes much less than half of the moon's surface", said James Head, a planetary scientist at Brown University.
The Chang'e-5 mission could assist reply questions akin to how lengthy the moon remained volcanically energetic in its inside and when its magnetic subject - key to defending any type of life from the solar's radiation - dissipated.
Preparations are underway for a new mission to the moon, with the departure from Jiangsu of the Yuan Wang-6 tracking ship, in what is to be a follow-up on the mission, with plans to bring samples back to Earth.
China made its first lunar touchdown in 2013.
Within the next decade, the country plans to establish a robotic base station to conduct unmanned exploration in the south polar region of the Moon.
It is to be developed through the Chang'e 6, 7 and 8 missions through the 2020s and expanded through the 2030s ahead of crewed landings.
Most of the samples will go to the Chinese Academy of Sciences National Astronomical Observatory of China (NAOC) in Beijing, Nature wrote, and it's unclear whether any arrangement can be reached for US scientists to gain access.
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