China on Tuesday launched a historic mission to moon to collect \u201cfirst lunar samples,\u201d state-run media reported.<\/p>\n
The spacecraft will \u201ccollect and return samples from the moon\u201d Xinhua news agency said, adding that it will be the country’s \u201cfirst attempt to retrieve samples from an extraterrestrial body.\u201d<\/p>\n
China\u2019s indigenous Long March-5 rocket carried the \u201cChang\u2019e-5\u201d spacecraft which blasted off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on the coast of southern island province of Hainan province at around 4:30 a.m. local time (2030 GMT Monday).<\/p>\n
It has been named after the Chinese moon goddess.<\/p>\n
The spacecraft is \u201cworld’s first moon-sample mission for more than 40 years\u201d and one of the most complicated and challenging missions in China’s aerospace history, the report said.<\/p>\n
Its aim includes \u201cinvestigation of the landing area to obtain the on-site analysis data related to the lunar samples, as well as systematic and long-term laboratory analysis of the lunar samples.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pei Zhaoyu, deputy director of the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration, said: \u201cthe mission will help promote China’s science and technology development, and lay an important foundation for China’s future manned lunar landing and deep space exploration.\u201d<\/p>\n
The spacecraft comprises of an orbiter, a lander, an ascender and a returner, with a total takeoff mass of 8.2 tons.<\/p>\n
The spacecraft has entered the lunar orbit and has begun its operations with help from its solar panels that provide it independent power source.<\/p>\n
It is expected that in next 48 hours, spacecraft\u2019s robotic arm drill bore into the ground. \u201cAbout 2 kg of samples are expected to be collected and sealed in a container in the spacecraft.\u201d<\/p>\n
Only when the geometric relationship between Earth and the moon is \u201csuitable\u201d, the orbiter will carry the returner back to Earth.<\/p>\n
It is expected to reenter the atmosphere and land at the Siziwang Banner in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region while the flight may last more than 20 days.<\/p>\n
China’s current three-step lunar exploration program began in 2004 and it includes orbiting and landing on the moon, and bringing back samples.<\/p>\n
\u201cThrough the program, China has acquired the basic technologies of unmanned lunar exploration with limited investment,\u201d said Pei.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnmanned rendezvous and docking in lunar orbit will be a historic first. It will be very difficult,\u201d said Peng Jing, deputy chief designer of the Chang’e-5 probe from the China Academy of Space Technology under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could call it a milestone mission. Its success will help us acquire the basic capabilities for future deep space exploration such as sampling and takeoff from Mars, asteroids and other celestial bodies,\u201d Peng added.<\/p>\n
The scientific goals of the Chang’e-5 mission include the investigation of the landing area to obtain the on-site analysis data related to the lunar samples, as well as systematic and long-term laboratory analysis of the lunar samples.<\/p>\n
The Chang’e-5 will land to the west of Chang’e-3 which was launched to the moon in 2013.<\/p>\n
China\u2019s space authorities said the site was chosen \u201cbecause the region has a young geological age, younger than the sampling areas of the United States and the Soviet Union more than 40 years ago\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis region has never been sampled. The new samples will be of great scientific value,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDomestic and overseas scientists will all have a chance to get the lunar samples to be brought back by Chang’e-5 for research,\u201d Pei said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China on Tuesday launched a historic mission to moon to collect \u201cfirst lunar samples,\u201d state-run media reported. The spacecraft will \u201ccollect and return samples from the moon\u201d Xinhua news agency said, adding that it will be the country’s \u201cfirst attempt to retrieve samples from an extraterrestrial body.\u201d China\u2019s indigenous Long March-5 rocket carried the \u201cChang\u2019e-5\u201d …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":66896,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[2381],"class_list":["post-66895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","tag-china"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}