China on Friday launched an automated spacecraft on a nearly two-month mission to collect rocks and soil from the moon’s back side, becoming the first country to undertake such an ambitious endeavor, Reuters reported. China’s largest rocket, Long March-5, launched at 17:27 Beijing time (12:27 Kiev time) from the Wenchang spaceport on the southern island of Hainan with the Chang’e-6 probe weighing more than 8 tons.
Chang’e-6’s mission is to land in the South Pole-Eitken basin on the back side of the moon, which is eternally facing away from Earth, after which it will retrieve and return samples.
The launch was another milestone in China’s lunar and space exploration program.
“It remains a mystery to us how China was able to develop such an ambitious and successful program in such a short time,” said Pierre-Yves Meslain, a French researcher working on one of the Chang’e-6 mission’s scientific objectives.
In 2018, Chang’e-4 made the first unmanned landing on the back side of the moon. In 2020, Chang’e-5 delivered lunar samples for the first time in 44 years, and Chang’e-6 could make China the first country to get samples from the “hidden” side of the moon.
Earlier, the launch of the Quequiao-2 transponder satellite, designed to link China’s lunar landers with ground stations, was reported.
The Vikram lander of India’s Chandrayaan-3 Automated Interplanetary Station (Chandrayaan-3), which landed on the Moon on Wednesday, has successfully established communication with the Mission Control Center in Bangalore, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) reported.
“Communication has been established between the Chandrayaan-3 lander and the MOX-ISTRAC (Mission Operations Center for Telemetry, Surveillance and Control) located in Bangalore,” the organization said in a statement.
The landing was made at 18:02 Indian time (15:32 sq. m.) in the area of the unexplored South Pole of the Moon.
Thus, India became the fourth country after the USSR, the United States and China to land its own vehicle on the Moon.
The LVM3 rocket with the Chandrayaan-3 automatic interplanetary station was launched on July 14 from the launch pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Center, located on the island of Sriharikota. On August 5, the station was launched into lunar orbit.
After the landing, the Pragyan lunar rover, equipped with various research equipment, will move off the platform and begin chemical analysis of the surface of the Earth’s natural satellite. The mission of the 20 kg lunar rover is designed for 14 Earth days.
The previous attempt to send a lander and lunar rover to the Moon was made in 2019 as part of the Chandrayaan-2 mission. Then the orbiter managed to enter lunar orbit, but due to communication problems, specialists were unable to correct the lunar position of the lander, which separated from the interplanetary station and crashed into the lunar surface.
The Chandrayaan-2 mission orbiter remained in orbit and continues to collect scientific data about the Earth’s natural satellite. Chandrayaan-3 does not include such a mission.
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) plans to send its Chandrayaan-3 (Chandrayaan-3) automated interplanetary station to the Moon on Friday.
The Chandrayaan-3 mission is scheduled to be launched on July 14, 2023, at 2:35 p.m. Indian time (12:05 a.m. QT) from the launch pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Center located on Sriharikota island.
According to the organization’s plan, the spacecraft will be launched into orbit using an LVM-3 launch vehicle, after which the probe will begin its autonomous flight to near-lunar orbit.
The Chandrayaan-3 station consists of three components – a landing module, a propulsion module and a lunar rover – whose main purpose is to demonstrate and test the technologies required for interplanetary missions.
After the spacecraft enters lunar orbit, its landing module will have to make a soft landing on the surface of the Moon, then the rover, equipped with various research equipment, will move off the platform and begin chemical analysis of the surface of the natural satellite of the Earth. The lunar rover mission is designed to last 14 Earth days.
A previous attempt to send a landing module and a lunar rover to the Moon was made in 2019 as part of the Chandrayaan-2 mission. Then the orbiter managed to enter the lunar orbit, but due to communication problems, specialists were unable to correct the landing of the landing module separated from the interplanetary station, as a result of which it crashed on impact with the lunar surface.
Orbiter mission Chandrayaan-2 remained in orbit and continues to collect scientific data on the Earth’s natural satellite. No such orbiter mission is planned for Chandrayaan-3.
The China Manned Spaceflight Program Administration (CMSA) on Monday announced plans to send astronauts (Chinese taikonauts) to the surface of the moon before 2030.
“According to the plan for a project to explore the moon by taikonauts, Chinese taikonauts will land on the moon for the first time before 2030, with two taikonauts driving a lunar rover to conduct scientific research,” the administration said in a statement on its website.
China has previously announced plans to land taikonauts on the moon and build a lunar research base there in the 2030s. The South Pole was suggested as a preliminary landing site because of the abundance of sunlight in the area and the presence of ice reserves from which water could be extracted.
China’s main rival in the “moon race” is the United States. In April, Bill Nelson, head of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said that the U.S. space agency expects to send astronauts to the moon in late 2025 or 2026 under the Artemis national lunar program.
The American super-heavy launch vehicle SLS (Space Launch System) with the Orion spacecraft, which is to fly to the Moon in a test unmanned mode as part of the Artemis 1 (Artemis-1) mission, will start on Monday from spaceport in Florida, according to NASA.
The launch is scheduled to take place in a two-hour time window that opens at 08:33 US East Coast Time (15:33 Moscow time) from Kennedy Space Center Launch Pad 39B.
As part of the Artemis 1 test mission, the Orion spacecraft will fly unmanned to the Moon, where it will orbit for several weeks. The ship will then return to Earth. The entire mission will last 42 days. The Orion descent capsule will splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California on October 10th.
The test flight should demonstrate the readiness of the SLS rocket and the Orion spacecraft for a manned mission.
The SLS launch vehicle developed by Boeing Corporation is currently the most powerful in the world. In the basic version, it is capable of launching 95 tons of payload into orbit. Promising modifications of the launch vehicle should provide an increase in carrying capacity up to 130 tons.
According to the plan of the American space agency, in 2024 it is planned to carry out the Artemis 2 mission, in which a crew of four astronauts will go to the moon. The manned spacecraft will have to fly around the Earth’s natural satellite. After a long space flight, the Orion descent ship with astronauts will splash down in the Pacific Ocean. As part of the Artemis 3 mission, which is currently scheduled for 2025, US astronauts will have to land on the surface of the moon.
The Artemis program was made public in September 2020. Its main goal is the return, 53 years after the last mission, of American astronauts to the lunar surface, the construction of a near-lunar station and the preparation of conditions for a possible colonization of the Moon in the future.
According to the American experts from The Planetary Society, NASA has been developing the SLS launch vehicle and the Orion spacecraft for 17 years. For these purposes, the agency spent about $50 billion.
