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China will launch an unmanned lunar mission on Friday that aims to return samples from the far side of the moon for the first time, in a potentially major step forward for the country’s ambitious space program.
The Chang’e-6 probe – China’s most complex robotic lunar mission to date – marks a major milestone in the country’s bid to become a dominant space power with plans to land astronauts on the moon by 2030 and build a research base at the South Pole.
The probe’s expected launch on a Long March-5 rocket from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on South China’s Hainan Island comes as a growing number of countries, including the United States, recognize the strategic and scientific benefits of expanded lunar exploration in an increasingly competitive field.
China’s planned 53-day mission would see the Chang’e-6 lander land in a gaping crater on the far side of the moon, which never faces Earth. China became the first and only country to land on the far side of the moon during its Chang’e-4 mission in 2019.
All the samples collected by the Chang’e-6 lander could help scientists look back at the evolution of the moon and the solar system itself – and provide important data to further China’s lunar ambitions.
“The Chang’e-6 aims to make breakthroughs in the design and control technology of the moon’s retrograde orbit, intelligent sampling, take-off and ascent technologies and automatic sample return on the far side of the moon,” Ge Ping, said deputy director of the China National Space Administration’s Center of Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering from the launch site last week.
Ambitious mission
The Chang’e-6 probe will be a key test of China’s space capabilities as it tries to realize leader Xi Jinping’s “eternal dream” of building the country into a space power.
China has made rapid progress in space exploration in recent years, in an area traditionally led by the United States and Russia.
With the Chang’e program, launched in 2007 and named after the moon goddess from Chinese mythology, China in 2013 became the first country in almost four decades to achieve a robotic moon landing. In 2022, China completed its own orbital space station, Tiangong.
The technically complex Chang’e-6 mission builds on both Chang’e-4’s 2019 record of landing on the far side of the moon and Chang’e-5’s 2020 success when it returned to the moon. earth with samples from the nearby moon.
This time, to communicate with Earth from the far side of the moon, Chang’e-6 will have to rely on the Queqiao-2 satellite, which was launched into lunar orbit in March.
The probe itself consists of four parts: an orbiter, a lander, a riser and a return module.
The mission plan is for the Chang’e-6 lander to collect lunar dust and rocks after landing in the vast South Pole-Aitken Basin, about 2,500 kilometers in diameter, a crater formed about 4 billion years ago.
A spacecraft would then transport the samples to the lunar orbiter for transfer to the reentry module and the mission’s return to Earth.
The complex mission “goes through virtually every step” that Chinese astronauts will need to land on the moon in the coming years, said James Head, a professor emeritus at Brown University who has worked with Chinese scientists leading the mission.
In addition to returning samples that could provide “fundamental new insights into the origins and early history of the moon and solar system,” the mission also serves as “robotic practice for these steps” to get astronauts to the moon and back, said he.
China plans to launch two more missions in the Chang-e series as it approaches its 2030 goal of sending astronauts to the moon, before building a research station at the moon’s south pole in the next decade – an area believed to contain water ice.
Scheduled for 2026, Chang’e-7 will aim to search for resources at the moon’s south pole, while Chang’e-8 could look at how to use lunar materials about two years later in preparation for building the research base , Chinese officials have said.
Competitive space
Friday’s launch comes as several countries ramp up their lunar programs amid a growing focus on the potential access to resources and further access to deep space exploration that successful lunar missions could bring.
Last year, India landed its first spacecraft on the moon, while Russia’s first moon mission in decades ended in failure when the Luna 25 probe crashed on the moon’s surface.
In January, Japan became the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the moon, although the Moon Sniper lander suffered power problems due to an incorrect landing angle. The following month, IM-1, a NASA-funded mission designed by the Texas-based private company Intuitive Machines, landed close to the South Pole.
That landing — the first by an American-made spacecraft in more than five decades — is part of a series of planned commercial missions intended to explore the moon’s surface before NASA attempts to return American astronauts there as early as 2026 and carry out its scientific missions. build a base camp.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson appeared to acknowledge last month that China’s pace — and concerns about its intentions — were fueling America’s urgency to return to the moon, decades after the Apollo crewed missions.
“We believe that much of their so-called civilian space program is a military program. I think we’re basically in a race,” Nelson told lawmakers last month, adding concern that China could try to keep the U.S. or other countries out of certain lunar regions if they get there first.
China has long said it stands for the peaceful uses of space and, like the US, has sought to use its space capabilities to cultivate international goodwill.
This time, China has said the Chang’e-6 mission will carry scientific instruments or payloads from France, Italy, Pakistan and the European Space Agency.
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