HELSINKI – China has introduced agreements for the launch of Chang’e-5, a project to collect and recover the first lunar samples since the 1970s.
Chang’e-5 aims to collect and recoil about two kilograms of lunar samples and in the past was scheduled to be introduced before the end of 2020. Ship tracking and satellite knowledge now imply that China is preparing for launch by the end of 2020. November.
Specialized shipping ships Yuanwang-21 and -22 are reported to have collected pieces from the Long Five March in the port city of Tianjin in the north of the country, and are lately transporting them to Qinglan on Hainan Island. Launch center.
In May, the Yuanwang-21 and 22 carried the Long March five rocket used to launch the Tianwen-1 Mars project last July from Tianjin to Hainan.
Last March 4 launches in China took about 60 days between delivery to Wenchang and takeoff. Yuanwang’s ships are expected to succeed in Qinlan on September 19, indicating that the launch is now most likely in the last ten days of November.
Chang’e-5 will point to a site near Mons Rumker, a volcanic formation in the Oceanus Procellarum region west of the near-moon face.
A launch in late November would allow Chang’e-5 to enter lunar orbit near dawn over Mons Rumker, who is scheduled to take position on November 27, in preparation for landing.
Unlike china’s Chang’e-4 spacecraft, which has been on several lunar days lately, Chang’e-5’s landing and sampling is expected to take place on a single lunar day of about 14 Earth days.
In particular, geological ensembles in the Mons Rumker region date back 1. 21 billion years, while samples brought to Earth through Apollo astronauts are between 3. 1 and 4. 4 billion years old.
The complex project consists of 4 spacecraft, with a service module offering propulsion. Once on the moon, the project’s air module will collect samples and place them in a ascent vehicle. This will take off and avoid with the service module orbiting the moon, employing an encounter of robots in lunar orbit that a direct return favored through the return of Soviet samples from the Moon.
Samples will be transferred to a return module before leaving lunar orbit to Earth. The return module will separate from the service module when approaching Earth, then perform a “re-entry jump”, bouncing once over the upper environment to manage The Moon’s High Speed Recoil. The 2014 Chang’e 5-T1 project, a check for Chang’e-5, used a re-entry in a jump.
The return capsule will deliver the samples to Siziwang Banner in Inner Mongolia, which is used for landings of the country’s manned missions in Shenzhou.
Observers that the complexity of the project profile is related to long-term manned lunar landing ambitions.
The assignment is the third of China’s lunar exploration assignment in the early 2000s. Chang’e-1 and 2 orbiters and the following Chang’e-3s and four landing and travel assignments marked the first two stages.
The launch of Chang’e-five originally scheduled for the end of 2017. A long failure on March 5 in July of the same year, delayed the project and project of the Station of the Chinese area.
As in previous phases, the project also has a save, Chang’e-6. This project will be reused for a pattern dating back near the lunar south pole if Chang’e-5 goes as planned.
China said it will then continue with an extended phase of lunar exploration involving Chang’e-7 and other lunar landing missions. The goal will be to create an “international lunar study station” between the mid-to-late 2020s as a precursor to the team. Touchdowns.
Pattern feedback generation and fun gained through Chang’e-5 will also be used for planned asteroid retracement missions near Earth and Mars later in the decade.