by China successfully landed an uncrewed spacecraft on the far side of the moon on Sunday, marking a significant step in the country’s ambitious mission to land astronauts on the lunar surface.
The Chang’e-6 probe made a soft landing on the surface of the moon at about 6.23am local time in China, raising China’s status among several space powers hoping to exploit lunar minerals for long-term astronaut missions and lunar bases to nurture. within the next ten years.
The moon program is part of a growing competition with the US – still the leader in space exploration – and other emerging powers including Japan and India.
The mission, described as China’s most complex robotic lunar effort, landed in a giant crater known as the South Pole-Aitken Basin, the China National Space Administration said.
It is the fourth successful lunar landing by China from four attempts, and the second on the far side of the moon. China is the only country to land a probe there, having done so in 2019 with its Chang’e-4 probe.
The side of the Moon constantly facing Earth is dotted with deep and dark craters, making communications and robotic landing operations more challenging.
Given these challenges, lunar and space experts involved in the Chang’e-6 mission described the landing phase as the moment where the chance of failure is at its highest.
“Landing on the far side of the moon is very difficult because you don’t have line-of-sight communications, you’re relying on a lot of links in the chain to control what’s going on, or you have to automate it. going forward,” said Neil Melville-Kenney, a technical officer at the European Space Agency who is working with China on one of the Chang’e-6 payloads.
“Automation is particularly difficult at high latitudes because you have long shadows which can be very confusing for landers,” said Mr Melville.
The Chang’e-6 probe launched on May 3 on a Chinese Ship rocket on March 5 from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on the southern island of Hainan, reaching the lunar neighborhood about a week later before tightening its orbit in preparation for landing .
The Chang’e-6 lander will now use a drill and a mechanical arm to collect 2kg of lunar material over two days and return it to Earth.
The samples will be transferred to a rocket booster on top of the lander, which will be launched back into space and collide with another spacecraft in lunar orbit before returning to Earth, and is expected to land in China’s Central Mongolia region around June 25 .
If all goes as planned, the collected samples will provide China with a fascinating record of the moon’s 4.5 billion-year history and provide new clues about the formation of the solar system. It will also allow an unprecedented comparison between the dark unexplored region and the far side of the Moon to better understand Earth.
A simulation laboratory for the Chang’e-6 probe will develop and verify sampling strategies and equipment control procedures, China’s official Xinhua news agency said. It will use a full-scale replica of the sampling area based on exploration results of the environment, rock distribution and lunar soil conditions around the landing site.
Chang’e-6 will be the world’s third lunar lander this year: Japan’s sleek lander touched down in January, followed next month by the US startup Intuitive Machines.
The other countries that sent spacecraft to Earth’s nearest neighbor were the Soviet Union and India at the time. The United States is the only country to have landed men on the moon, starting in 1969.
China aims to put a man on the moon before 2030, which would make it the second nation after the United States to do so.
NASA under the US Artemis program is planning to land astronauts on the moon again – for the first time in over 50 years – although NASA pushed the target date back to 2026 earlier this year.
The space agency is partnering with others including Canada, Europe and Japan, whose astronauts will accompany US crews on the Artemis mission.
Artemis relies heavily on private companies, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, whose Starship rocket this decade aims to attempt the first astronaut landing since NASA’s final Apollo mission in 1972.
On Saturday, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa canceled a private lunar mission he paid for, which was to use SpaceX’s Starship, citing schedule uncertainties in the rocket’s development.
Boeing and NASA have postponed the first crewed launch of the company’s Starliner, a long-delayed capsule meant to be the second US space taxi to low-Earth orbit.
Additional reporting from agencies
