Lunar rover soft-lands on the moon
Print Edition
China yesterday successfully carried out the world’s first soft landing of a space probe on the moon in nearly four decades, the next stage in an ambitious space program that aims to eventually have a Chinese astronaut set foot on the moon.
The unmanned Chang’e-3 lander, named after a mythical Chinese goddess of the moon, touched down at 9:11pm on Earth’s nearest neighbor following an 11-minute landing process. The lander carried a six-wheeled moon rover called “Yutu,” or “Jade Rabbit,” the goddess’ pet.
China is the third country to carry out a lunar soft landing after the United States and the former Soviet Union. The last one was by the Soviet Union in 1976.
The lunar probe began to carry out soft-landing on the moon at 9pm and touched down on an ancient 400-kilometer-wide plain known in Latin as Sinus Iridum, or The Bay of Rainbows, 11 minutes later, according to Beijing Aerospace Control Center.
The Bay of Rainbows was selected because it has yet to be studied, has ample sunlight and is convenient for remote communications with Earth.
The probe’s soft-landing is the most difficult task during the mission, said Wu Weiren, the lunar program’s chief designer.
The probe used sensors and 3D imaging to identify a flat surface. Thrusters were then deployed 100 meters from the lunar surface to gently guide the craft into position.
During the process, the probe decelerated from 15 kilometers above the moon, stayed hovering at 100 meters from the lunar surface to use sensors to assess the landing area to avoid obstacles and locate the final landing spot, and descended slowly onto the surface.
The rover was set to be released from the landing craft in “a few hours,” according to a post on Chang’e’s Weibo page last night.
Following separation, the rover will spend about three months exploring the moon’s surface and looking for natural resources.
The rover can climb slopes of up to 30 degrees and travel at 200 meters per hour, according to the Shanghai Aerospace Systems Engineering Research Institute.
The soft landing comes a decade after the country first sent an astronaut into space, and ahead of plans to establish a permanent space station by 2020 and eventually send a human to the moon.
Compared with the US and the former Soviet Union, which have successfully conducted 13 soft-landings on the moon, China’s soft-landing mission designed the suspension and obstacle-avoiding phases to survey the landing area much more precisely through fitted detectors, scientists said.
Chang’e-3 relied on auto-control for descent, range and velocity measurements, finding the proper landing point, and free-falling.
The probe is equipped with shock absorbers in its four “legs” to cushion the impact of the landing, making Chang’e-3 the first Chinese spacecraft with “legs.”
Chang’e-3 adopted a variable thrust engine designed and made by Chinese scientists.
It can realize continuous variation of thrust power ranging from 1,500 to 7,500 newtons, according to Wu.
The soft-landing was carried out 12 days after the probe blasted off on an enhanced Long March-3B carrier rocket. Chang’e-3 includes a lander and the Yutu moon rover, whose tasks include surveying the moon’s geological structure and surface substances and looking for natural resources.
The lander will operate there for one year while the rover will be there for three months.
Chang’e-3 is part of the second phase of China’s lunar program, which includes orbiting, landing and returning to Earth.
It follows the success of the Chang’e-1 and Chang’e-2 missions in 2007 and 2010. The successful landing shows China has the ability of in-situ exploration on an extraterrestrial body, said Sun Huixian, deputy engineer-in-chief in charge of the second phase of China’s lunar program.
A renewed moon fever has sprung up in recent years following the lunar probe climax in the 1960s and 1970s.
“Compared to the last century’s space race between the United States and the former Soviet Union, mankind’s current return to the moon is more based on curiosity and exploration of the unknown universe,” Sun said.
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