BEIJING (AP) – Chinese ground crews are awaiting the return of a lunar probe that recovers the first fresh samples of rock and debris from the moon in more than 40 years.
The Chang’e spacecraft is expected to land in the Siziwang district of the vast Inner Mongolia region late Wednesday or early Thursday. It fired engines early Wednesday to start it up before the orbit separated from the return vehicle, with all systems running as expected, China’s National Space Administration said.
The recovery of the return vehicle will be complicated by its small size, darkness and heavy snow, state media reported. Plans call for an initial bounce against the Earth’s atmosphere to reduce its speed before passing and parachuting, making it difficult to calculate exactly where it will land, according to the official Xinhua news agency, which quoted Bian Hancheng as saying. recovery crew leader, as they say.
State broadcaster CCTV showed four military helicopters standing Wednesday morning at a base in the snowy meadows. The crews of the vehicles on the ground will also try to perfect the signals. Although its surface extent is relatively familiar due to its use as a landing site for Shenzhou manned spacecraft.
Chang’e 5 landed on the moon on December 1 and collected about 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of samples by removing them from the surface and drilling 2 meters (approximately 6 feet) into the lunar crust. Samples were deposited in a sealed container that a boarding vehicle took to the return module.
Flying with a Chinese flag, the lander ceased to operate shortly after being used as an ascending launch pad, which was ejected from orbit after transferring the samples and came to rest on the surface of the moon.
The return of the spacecraft will be the first time scientists have obtained fresh samples of lunar rocks from the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 robotic spacecraft in 1976.
Chang’e 5 left a launch base in Hainan Province, in the south of the island, on November 23, with a mission expected to last 23 days.
This is the third successful lunar landing in China, but the only one that came out of the moon again. Its predecessor, Chang’e 4, became the first spacecraft to land on the unexplored far side of the Moon and continues to send data on conditions that could affect a future human stay on the Moon.
The moon has been a particular focus of the Chinese space program, which says it plans to land humans on it and possibly build a permanent base. No timeline or other details have been announced.
China has also joined the effort to explore Mars. In July, it launched the Tianwen 1 spacecraft, which carried a lander and a robot rover to search for water.
The Chinese space program has proceeded with more caution than the Soviet-American space race of the 1960s, marked by fatalities and launch failures.
In 2003, China became the third country to send an astronaut into orbit on its own after the Soviet Union and the United States.
The latest flight includes collaboration with the European Space Agency, which is helping to control the mission. Amid concerns over the secrecy of China’s space program and close military connections, the United States is banning cooperation between NASA and the CNSA unless Congress gives its approval. This has prevented China from participating in the International Space Station, which it has tried to compensate for by launching an experimental space station and plans to complete a permanent orbital advance site in the next two years.
The rocks and debris recovered by Chang’e 5 are believed to be billions of years younger than those obtained by the United States and the former Soviet Union, which offer new insights into the history of the moon and other bodies. of the solar system.
They come from a part of the moon known as Oceanus Procellarum, or Ocean of Storms, near a place called Mons Rumker which was believed to be volcanic in ancient times.
As with the 382 kilograms (842 pounds) of lunar samples recovered by U.S. astronauts from 1969 to 1972, they will be analyzed by age and composition and likely to be shared with other countries.
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This story has been corrected to show that the mission is the first to return the rocks of the moon in more than 40 years, instead of 45.