China's Chang'e-5 lands on the Moon to scratch surface
- Reference: 1606847457
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/12/01/change_5_lands/
- Source link:
The news was trumpeted by Chinese state media and confirmed by enthusiasts [1]looking out for signals from the spacecraft.
[2]#Breaking : The Chang'e-5 successfully landed on the near side of moon, China's National Space Administration (CNSA) announced on Tuesday. [3]pic.twitter.com/XPLbPyAYG8 — People's Daily, China (@PDChina) [4]December 1, 2020
The landing follows earlier successful missions to the Moon by the Chinese space programme, although Chang'e-5 does not feature a rover this time around. The goal of this mission is the collection of approximately 2kg of stones and soil (including samples from 2 metres down) to be returned to Earth for study.
The whole process from initiation of powered descent to a soft landing took approximately 15 minutes, with enthusiasts following the action before official confirmation that the lander was down safely.
Samples will be collected over the next few days before the ascent stage lifts off to rendezvous with the waiting orbiter. The samples will then be transferred to a return vehicle and sent back to Earth for a landing in the middle of December.
It is a convoluted process, and not dissimilar to the Apollo lunar missions, except on a considerably smaller (and uncrewed) scale with the added twist of a fully robotic docking in lunar orbit.
A successful mission will pave the way for future Chang'e spacecraft and a possible crewed jaunt to the lunar surface in the next decade or so. ®
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[1] https://twitter.com/bg2bhc/status/1333795632897683461
[2] https://twitter.com/hashtag/Breaking?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[3] https://t.co/XPLbPyAYG8
[4] https://twitter.com/PDChina/status/1333792839092690944?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[5] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: May I be the first to say
China may be far behind the Soviet/Russian space programme when it comes to automated docking, but it appears they beat the USA by a few years.
(Russia 1967, ESA 2008, China 2011, USA 2019. Corrections welcome, NASA did try an automated docking earlier but it failed and I can't spot a reflight)
Re: May I be the first to say
I thought Americans were the space docking aficionados.
Space docking
Is that like Space Trucking but for ships?
Re: May I be the first to say
The Americans may have been keen on docking, but that was all manually flown. The first successful American docking was in 1966 (Neil Armstrong, Gemini 8) but that was flown manually. NASA continued to use manual docking throughout the Apollo, SkyLab and Space Shuttle programs.
The Russians had an automated docking system up and running first. Its first use was in 1967 and they have used automated docking systems ever since. The only change has the replacement of their original Igla docking system by the current Kurs system.
AFAIK the first US automated docking occurred as part of the first manned SpaceX Crew Dragon 2 mission to the ISS earlier this year.
Notice the difference between the old US missions and the Chinese? Not to wish them ill - anybody doing space stuff is great in my books. But...
The US put their missions on live TV, to show both failures and successes as they happened. The Chinese made sure that it successfully landed before announcing it. A little insecurity there, it would seem.
Yep, their government/dictator are a shower of cunts. But the Chinese people who worked on this are more or less the same as the engineers in Russia, Europe, India, USA who accomplished similar. Dedicated, educated, intelligent and hard working.
Fair play to them, I wish these folk all the best and many future successes.
Absolutely on both counts. A glass of Tsingtao for the boffins, an empty glass for the Xi.
If you were to read over their shoudlers, i bet the plans on monitor #1 were from NASA, monitor #2 from ESA, and monitor #3 from Roscosmos.
The Russians were somewhat coy about their launches and landings too, before they did the joint mission with NASA which had the two countries' spacecraft docking over Bognor Regis. The USA's missions were run by the civilian body NASA, so could not be so secret (although the DoD's shuttle launches and landings were not televised, I believe).
I imagine that the Chinese space program could possibly use this as a test to try to return samples from the surface of Mars in the next few years.
India too
It came so close a few months back. Another attempt due next year.
Miniature Apollo Mission
Part of me thinks that the coolest thing about the Chang'e 5 mission is that it's essentially a step-by-step retread of the Apollo missions, only in miniature (well, a bit smaller). One major change being that they didn't have to do the weird flip of the lander with the command module before reaching lunar orbit as was the case with the Apollo missions.
It's also great to see the Chinese space agency working together with ESA on the tracking of the mission, while providing more live coverage of the launch and landing than ever before. It's a good sign of less paranoia and distrust from both sides.
Re: Miniature Apollo Mission
> a step-by-step retread of the Apollo missions, only in miniature (well, a bit smaller)
And without the people.
2kg... (including samples from 2 metres down)
That doesn't seem all that heavy, but it does seem deep, eh?
May I be the first to say
Welcome to the 1960's!