Mission to collect samples from moon set for 2017
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China aims to launch its next unmanned lunar probe in 2017, to collect and bring home samples from the moon, an official said yesterday.
The country’s first probe, the Chang’e-3, named after a goddess in Chinese mythology, landed on the moon last Saturday, setting down a lunar rover called Yutu, Jade Rabbit in English, named after her pet.
Development of the Chang’e-5 probe, tasked with the moon sampling mission, is well underway and is expected to launch around 2017, a spokesman for the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense said.
“After the success of the Chang’e-3 mission, the lunar exploration program will enter the third phase, with the main goal being to achieve unmanned automatic collection of samples and returning them,” Wu Zhijian told a news conference.
“The program’s third phase will be more difficult because many breakthroughs must be made in key technologies such as taking off from the moon’s surface, collecting samples, docking in lunar orbit, and high-speed Earth re-entry, all of which are new to China,” Wu told reporters.
Chang’e-4, the backup probe for Chang’e-3, will be adapted to verify technologies for Chang’e-5, Wu said.
“The completion of the third phase will not mean an end to China’s lunar probe program,” Wu said. “It should be a new starting point.”
However, Wu said that follow-up plans for lunar exploration after the third phase is completed are still being studied.
China has yet to announce its lunar ambitions beyond the sampling mission, Wu said, when asked if it planned to send astronauts there.
He said that China’s space missions are for peaceful purposes.
“Our country’s lunar exploration program is a technology program for the peaceful uses of outer space, as well as an open program,” said Wu, citing cooperation with Russian and European counterparts and international bodies.
Data collected through the Chang’e-1 and Chang’e-2 probes are open to scientists across the world, Wu said.
China shared information collected by Chang’e-1 with the European Space Agency, and an ESA aerospace control center and three of its control stations took part in the Chang’e-3 mission, he said.
“In the next stage of the lunar program, there will be more international cooperation,” he said.
“Despite current progress, China still lags behind space giants like the United States and Russia in many aspects,” he said. “We need to work harder and move faster.”
China’s leaders have made advancing the space program a priority, with President Xi Jinping calling for the country to establish itself as a space power.
The US Defense Department has highlighted China’s increasing space capabilities, however, saying that it was pursuing activities aimed at preventing its adversaries from using space-based assets during a crisis.
Zhou Jianliang, chief engineer of the Beijing Aerospace Control Center, said the country does not have 24-hour monitoring of probes operating far from Earth’s orbit, as its two deep space monitoring stations are both in China.
“It is imperative to build a deep space monitoring station abroad in order to make up for blind measurements and realize round-the-clock monitoring,” Zhou said, but gave no details.
In China’s latest manned space mission in June, three astronauts spent 15 days in orbit and docked with an experimental space laboratory, part of its efforts to build a working space station by 2020.
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