Pictures from lunar module
Print Edition
CHINA yesterday published photographs of the Earth and Moon together taken by the orbiting service module of the country’s unmanned lunar orbiter that returned this month.
The pictures were taken on Sunday by the service module at a point 540,000 kilometers from Earth and 920,000km from the Moon after it was separated from the return capsule of China’s test lunar orbiter on November 1, ending its eight-day mission.
It was the world’s first mission to the Moon and back in some 40 years, with China becoming the third nation to do so after the Soviet Union and the United States.
The service module went back into orbit and conducted more tests after the November 1 separation about 5,000km above the Earth, said a statement from China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, which released the photos.
Launched on October 24, the orbiter traversed 840,000km in eight days in a mission that saw it go around the far side of the Moon. One of the biggest challenges was a “bounce” during the orbiter’s re-entry as it made its way home, as the orbiter must enter the atmosphere at a very precise angle. An error of 0.2 degrees would have rendered the mission a failure.
To help it slow down, the craft is designed to “bounce” off the edge of the atmosphere before re-entering again. The process has been compared to a stone skipping across water, and can shorten the “braking distance,” according to Zhou Jianliang, chief engineer with the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center.
The program is a test run for the final chapter of the country’s three-step lunar program, which includes orbiting, landing and returning.
The latest mission is to obtain data and validate re-entry technology such as the heat shield and trajectory design for a future landing on the Moon as part of the Chang’e-5 mission, expected to be launched around 2017 to collect lunar samples and return to the Earth. If successful, China will become the third nation to do so.
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