In the mission, the Chinese achieved several milestones, including the first lunar sample, the first takeoff from a body in outer space, the first encounter and docking in lunar orbit, and the first spacecraft that carried samples and entered the Earth's atmosphere
The return capsule of the Chinese probe Chang'e-5 landed on Earth in the early hours of Thursday, bringing with it China's first samples collected from lunar soil.
The spacecraft landed in Siziwang in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in northern China at 01:59. Beijing time, (06:59 Israel time).
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) reports the success of China's current three-phase lunar exploration program to launch spacecraft into lunar orbit, land and return samples, which began in 2004.
One of the most complex tasks
Chang'e-5 is one of the most complex and challenging missions in the history of China's space program. The probe, which includes a spacecraft, a lander, a lunar take-off component, and an Earth-landing component, was launched on November 24, and its lander-ascendant combination landed north of Mons Ramkar in the Ocean of Proslerum, also known as the Ocean of Storms, on the near side of the moon on December 1.
In the mission, the Chinese achieved several milestones, including the first lunar sample, the first takeoff from a body in outer space, the first encounter and docking in lunar orbit, and the first spacecraft that carried samples and entered the Earth's atmosphere at high speed. The soil samples brought back by Chang'e-5 are the first since 1976.
The capsule, which contained about 2 kg of lunar material from the ground and dug to a depth of 2 meters, was located shortly after landing. The purpose of the mission was to collect rock samples believed to be billions of years younger than so far provided by the Soviet Apollo and Luna missions.
While the samples will be transferred to a specially built laboratory in Beijing for preparation, analysis and storage, Chang'e-5 has been able to verify technologies for taking off from the moon and automatically landing and docking in lunar orbit. This success opens the way for planned missions to return additional samples also from asteroids and Mars in the coming decade, as well as manned landings on the moon in the XNUMXs.
Chang'e-5 was launched on November 23 and entered lunar orbit 112 hours later. The samples were collected a few hours after landing on November 1, and the launch vehicle transferred the collected material into lunar orbit.
This is an unprecedented automatic rendezvous in lunar orbit and docking with the mission service module two days later allowed the transfer of 2 kg of material into the return capsule. The mission was the most complex in China so far and also in general in terms of robotic space exploration.
The Chang'e-6 spacecraft, which was prepared for a backup mission, will now receive a new mission - landing at the lunar south pole or the South Pole-Aitken Basin. The mission will include contributions from the French space agency -CNES. Verifying the age of the samples will confirm hypotheses that certain regions of the moon experienced volcanic eruptions late in the moon's geological history, and analyzing the composition of the materials could provide insights into the causes of this eruption.
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The Chinese did not share any information with the scientific community on the previous mission, so you are delusional if you think the communist regime will share information this time. It is under the guise of national security. The West will not receive a single piece of information. PROVE ME WRONG. The Chinese are looking for minerals that will bring them money and fuel their continued expansion and continued decline of Western democracies with the help of billions of dollars that go to corrupt Western elites like the Biden family and the Clintons.