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China is scheduled to launch an uncrewed lunar mission on Friday that aims to bring back samples from the far side of the moon for the first time, in a potentially major step forward for the country’s ambitious space program .
The Chang’e-6 probe – China’s most complex robotic lunar mission to date – marks an important milestone in the country’s bid to become a dominant space power with plans to land astronauts on the moon 2030 and build a research base on its south pole. .
The expected launch of the Long March-5 rocket from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in southern China’s Hainan island comes as a growing number of countries, including the United States, are eyeing the strategic and scientific benefits of with extended lunar exploration. competitive field.
China’s proposed 53-day mission would see the Chang’e-6 lander descend into a gaping crater on the far side of the moon, which never faces Earth. China was the first and only country to land on the side of the moon during its 2019 Chang’e-4 mission.
Any extraterrestrial samples recovered by the Chang’e-6 lander could help scientists trace the evolution of the moon and the solar system itself – and provide important data to advance China’s lunar ambitions.
“The Chang’e-6 aims to achieve breakthroughs in the design and control technology of the lunar reverse orbit, intelligent sampling, takeoff and ascent technologies, and automatic sample return to the far side of the moon, ” Ge Ping, deputy director of the Center for Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering of the China National Space Administration said last week from the launch site.
An ambitious mission
The Chang’e-6 probe will be a key test of China’s space prowess in its pursuit of leader Xi Jinping’s “eternal dream” of building the country into a space power.
China has made rapid space progress in recent years, in an area traditionally dominated by the United States and Russia.
With the Chang’e program, launched in 2007 and named for the moon goddess of Chinese mythology, China in 2013 became the first country to achieve a robotic moon landing in nearly four decades. In 2022, China completed its own orbital space station, the Tiangong.
The technically complex Chang’e-6 mission builds on Chang’e-4’s record in 2019 for landing on the far side of the moon, and the success of Chang’e-5 in 2020 in returning to Earth with close-up lunar samples .
This time, to communicate with Earth from the far side of the moon, Chang’e-6 must rely on the Queqiao-2 satellite, which was launched into lunar orbit in March.
The probe itself consists of four parts: orbiter, lander, ascender and re-entry module.
The mission plan is for the Chang’e-6 lander to collect lunar dust and rocks after touching down in the sprawling basin, about 2,500 kilometers in diameter, the South Pole-Aitken, a crater formed about 4 billion years ago ago.
A progenitor spacecraft would then carry the samples to lunar orbit for transfer to the reentry module and return to Earth.
The complex mission “goes through almost every step” that will be needed for Chinese astronauts to land on the moon in the coming years, according to James Head, a professor emeritus at Brown University who collaborated with Chinese scientists leading the mission.
In addition to returning samples that could “provide fundamental new insights into the origin and early history of the moon and solar system,” the mission also serves as a “robotic exercise for these steps” to get astronauts to the moon and back, he said.
China plans to launch two more missions in the Chang-e series as it nears its 2030 goal of sending astronauts to the moon before building a research station in the next decade on the moon’s south pole – a region believed to have there is water ice.
Chang’e-7, scheduled for 2026, will aim to search for resources on the moon’s south pole, while Chang’e-8 about two years later could look at how to use lunar materials to prepare for the construction of the research base, Chinese officials said. It has been said.
Competitive space
Friday’s launch comes as multiple nations are ramping up their lunar programs amid growing focus on the potential access to resources and additional space exploration access that successful lunar missions could bring.
Last year, India landed its first spacecraft on the moon, while Russia’s first lunar mission in years ended when its Luna 25 probe crashed into the lunar surface.
In January, Japan became the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the moon, although its Moon Sniper lander experienced power problems due to an incorrect landing angle. The following month, IM-1, a NASA-funded mission designed by the Texas-based private company Intuitive Machines, touched down near the south pole.
That landing – the first by a US spacecraft in more than five decades – is among several planned commercial missions intended to explore the lunar surface before NASA tries to return US astronauts there as early as 2026 and build his base science camp.
NASA administrator Bill Nelson appeared to acknowledge last month that China’s speed – and concerns about its intentions – were driving America’s urgency to return to the moon, decades after its Apollo crewed missions.
“We believe that a lot of their so-called civilian space program is a military program. I think we’re really in a race,” Nelson told lawmakers last month, adding to his concern that China could try to ban the United States or other countries from certain moon zones if they get there on start.
China has long said it stands for the peaceful use of space, and, like the United States, has sought to use its ability to use space to build international goodwill.
This time, China said the Chang’e-6 mission will carry scientific instruments or payloads from France, Italy, Pakistan and the European Space Agency.
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