China's Chang'e-6 safely returns to Earth with first-ever lunar far side samples

Photo: Wang Sijiang

Chang'e-6 - China's latest leap of moon exploration - has claimed full success, as the returning capsule of the craft, carrying the first batch of lunar samples collected from the far side of the moon in human history, safely touched down in designated landing site in the Siziwang Banner, in North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Tuesday afternoon at 2:07 pm.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday extended congratulations on the complete success of the Chang'e-6 mission that brought back the world's first samples collected from the moon's far side. It marks "another landmark achievement in China's endeavor to become a space and sci-tech power," Xi noted. 

In the congratulatory letter, Xi also stressed the hope to strengthen international exchange and cooperation in carrying out major aerospace engineering projects including deep-space explorations.

According to the China National Space Administration (CNSA), as planned, after the necessary ground processing work is completed, the recovered Chang'e-6 returner will be airlifted to Beijing, where the sample containers and payload will be extracted. The CNSA will hold a handover ceremony at an appropriate time to officially transfer the lunar samples to the ground application system. Subsequently, the samples will undergo storage, analysis and related research work.

After successfully completing the Chang'e-6 mission, the Queqiao-2 relay satellite will carry out scientific exploration missions at an appropriate time. It will use its onboard instruments, including an extreme ultraviolet camera, an arrayed neutral atom imager, and an Earth-Moon Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) experiment system, to collect scientific data from the moon and deep space, the CNSA said in a statement sent to the Global Times. 

Stargazers from all over the world have paid close attention to the 53 day-long round trip of Chang'e-6, and applauded Tuesday for the unprecedented feat of it retrieving precious lunar samples from the far side of the moon, while suggesting that these samples would not only help enhance the humanity's understanding of the Earth's natural satellite but also create new opportunities for international cooperation in space studies, including those with the US.

"I do think a successful conclusion to this very complex mission [Chang'e-6] will show that Chang'e-5 was not just a fluke, and that Chinese space engineers really have mastered the challenges of carrying out these very difficult missions far from Earth, it's a real step forward in the maturity of the Chinese space effort," Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the US, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

"The successful execution of the Chang'e-6 mission has achieved breakthroughs in key technologies such as retrograde lunar orbit design and control, rapid intelligent sampling on the lunar far side, and ascent from the lunar far side. These technological advancements lay a foundation for future deep space exploration missions," Kang Guohua, a professor of Aerospace Engineering at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

The mission not only sets a new record for China's lunar exploration program but also has a profound impact on the global aerospace field. Through the Chang'e-6 mission, China has demonstrated its leadership and influence in space exploration, Kang said noting that lunar soil from the far side of the moon holds immense value for scientific research and deep space exploration due to its uniqueness. 

Since no human probe has directly landed on and sampled from the far side, the soil from this area offers a distinct perspective. The South Pole-Aitken Basin is the oldest and deepest large impact basin on the moon, and samples from here can help scientists study the moon's origin and evolution more deeply, potentially providing critical clues about the formation and evolution of the solar system, he said.

Potential of intl collaboration in space

This year marks the 20th anniversary of China's lunar exploration program. China stands ready to continue working with like-minded international partners to explore humanity's common domain of the outer space, realize the shared dream of people around the world to discover more about the moon, and strive to advance the world's common endeavor of peacefully using the outer space, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning said on Tuesday, commenting on Chang'e-6's success.

The Chang'e-6 mission hosted four international payloads to the moon, including the European Space Agency (ESA)'s lunar surface ion composition analyzer, France's radon detection instrument, Italy's laser corner reflector, and a CubeSat from Pakistan, the CNSA revealed to the Global Times.

Pakistan's CubeSat, the country's inaugural lunar satellite, has sent back the first images it captured on May 10. It also achieved its goal of "successful separation and obtaining telemetry," marking the smooth completion of Pakistan's first-ever lunar project.

ESA's lunar surface ion composition analyzer, jointly developed with the National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, successfully completed seven scientific detections after it started up on June 2, with the total detection time exceeding 3 hours, thus achieving the scheduled goal of detecting the lunar surface for at least 1 hour. This payload conducted negative ion detection on the lunar surface for the first time internationally, and the joint team is currently conducting scientific data analysis.

For the French payload, Philippe Baptiste, chairman of the French National Center for Space Studies, said it would still take some time to get all the data, but they are looking forward to it, as "the last time France was on the moon with an active instrument, it was in 1970," Baptiste was quoted as saying in a CGTN report.

The Chang'e-6 mission and its collection of precious samples from the far side of the moon will create more opportunities for cooperation between China and Western countries in space, according to space observers. And it is highly likely that NASA would again greenlight its researchers to access to these precious samples retrieved by the Chang'e-6 mission, however, the difficulties still lie in the US' domestic legal barriers, they said. 

McDowell said he would be happy to see sharing of data between China and the US. The US space observer pointed out however that "the political winds here in the US are still strongly against allowing any large-scale cooperation."

In a November 29 statement, NASA said it has certified its intent to the US Congress to "allow NASA-funded researchers to apply to the China National Space Administration for access to lunar samples returned to Earth on the Chang'e 5 mission." However, NASA made it clear that this allowance applies specifically to Chang'e 5 mission samples and "the normal prohibition on bilateral activity with (the) PRC (People's Republic of China) on NASA-funded projects remains in place."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told the Global Times on June 7 at a regular press conference that China is always open toward space exchanges and cooperation with the US. There are, however, difficulties in China-US space cooperation at the moment, which are caused by US domestic legislation such as the Wolf Amendment that prevents normal exchanges and dialogue between Chinese and US space agencies, Mao said.

In a rarely seen friendly move, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson reportedly sent congratulations to China over the Chinese spacecraft's landing on the lunar surface earlier this month, saying he was impressed with its fourth successful moon landing, the Washington Post reported on US local time Monday. 

"I've been fairly pointed in my comments that we're in a space race with the Chinese, and that they are very good," he said in a recent interview with The Washington Post. "Especially in the last 10 years, they've had a lot of success. They usually say what they mean, and they execute on what they say."

However, the China space hawk continued its narrative of creating a new space race with China, by claiming that despite China's many achievements in space - which include an occupied space station in low Earth orbit and landing a rover on Mars in 2021 - the US remains on track to return astronauts to the lunar surface ahead of its chief rival, according to the report.  

In a key step toward that goal, NASA intends to fly four astronauts around the moon late next year, and then land people on the surface in late 2026 for the first time since the last of the Apollo missions, in 1972.

Despite competition between the US and China, the two countries will have to find a way to coexist on and around the moon, Nelson was quoted as saying.

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NASA chief’s hawkish remarks another pathetic attempt, exposes US own hegemony and colonial ambitions

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT m Illustration: Liu Rui/GT 

 

Chinese experts battered the latest round of attacks from NASA chief Bill Nelson, saying his smearing remarks against China's space development are yet another ridiculous and pathetic attempt to hype the "China threat" theory to get more funding, which only exposes the US' own hegemonic and colonial ambitions.

In an interview with POLITICO, Nelson said the race to the moon between the US and China is getting tighter and the next two years could determine who gains the upper hand.

He warned that Beijing could try to "dominate" the locations they step foot on the lunar surface or even try to "keep the US out," while citing the Nansha Islands as an "example" to prove his point. 

The remarks angered Chinese researchers and commentators who have repeatedly made clear that China's exploration of the moon is dedicated to the advancement of humanity. 

"Being a former astronaut himself, it is pathetic that he would play the trick of a thief crying 'stop thief,'" Song Zhongping, a space analyst and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Tuesday. 

It is an established fact written into the United Nations Outer Space Treaty and others that the moon does not belong to any country in the world, while the Nansha Islands are indisputably part of China's territory. Comparing these two shows that Nelson does not even understand international law or the Outer Space Treaty, Song noted.

Nelson's attempt in a way reflects the mentality that the US wants to colonize the moon and consolidate its own hegemony in space, analysts said, evident in the new space version of an "Enclosure Movement" of the Artemis program, which gathered "like-minded" partners such as Canada, Japan and Europe but excludes China and Russia. 

Nelson's remarks failed even to convince its own scholars. Victoria Samson, Washington director of the Secure World Foundation, said she is dubious about the "moon brawl," noting that China, like the US, is a party to the Outer Space Treaty, which bars nations from making territorial claims on any celestial body, including the moon, POLITICO reported.

It will be difficult for any nation to maintain a long-term human presence in deep space, she said, which makes the claims more unrealistic.

Nelson's remarks followed US congressional approval to fund NASA with $24.5 billion in fiscal 2023, about half a billion dollars less than US President Joe Biden had requested.

While still expressing "confidence" that the next moon mission could happen as planned to send a crew into the moon's orbit by 2024, he admitted that the agency is "under intense pressure" because it has been forced, as a cost-saving measure, to reuse all the avionics inside the Artemis I capsule for Artemis II.

Huang Zhicheng, a Chinese expert in aerospace science and technology, told the Global Times on Tuesday that NASA, with a lot on its plate including the operation of the International Space Station, the Artemis program and deep-space exploration projects, is hyping the "China threat" theory to get more money, as the just-concluded Space Launch System is already years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. 

There is still a huge gap in the budget and many problems to solve for the US' manned moon landing to succeed, Huang said. 

Specifically, Boeing that is undertaking the rocket launch tasks for the Artemis program has a chaotic management and it is hard to get the tasks done on time. For another thing, the moon lander being developed by SpaceX is yet to achieve its designated progress, and if the lander cannot be completed successfully this year, it may further delay the entire project, Huang noted. 

Publicly attacking China's space program has become routine for NASA in the past few months. In December, the NASA chief accused China of being "one of the very few nations" that would not be partners with the US and that it is being "very secretive" in terms of space programs. In September, Nelson accused China of lacking needed transparency over issues. In July, the NASA chief blatantly claimed that China is "trying to occupy the moon." In May, he said that China stole the US' space technology. 

"These accusations fired by NASA are unfounded and unjustified," Song said. "China has always had a cooperative and open attitude in the space sector." 

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Accusing China of "occupying the moon" exposes the America’s ambitions to monopolize space

 

A NASA helicopter flies past the agency's Space Launch System rocket on August 29, 2022. NASA called off the test flight on Monday of its largest-ever Moon rocket, citing engine problem. Photo: AFP

System (SLS) rocket carrying the Orion capsule remained on the ground at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, disappointing people who gathered at the center and those who tuned in live to watch US' rekindling of lunar surface landing project since the Apollo program some half a century ago.

"The launch of Artemis I is no longer happening today as teams work through an issue with an engine bleed. Teams will continue to gather data, and we will keep you posted on the timing of the next launch attempt," NASA posted on Twitter. According to the New York Times, NASA has another window in early September, but it also depends on whether bugs are fixed.

Before the postponement was decided, NASA repeatedly stopped and restarted the fueling of SLS with nearly 1 million gallons of super-cold hydrogen and oxygen due to the leak in Kennedy Space Center, US media said.

The postponed launch came after China's state-owned space giant China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced about a week earlier that China's new-generation manned rocket, which is currently under development, will possess the capability to send taikonauts to the moon by around 2030.

Qian Hang, a senior Chinese expert on aerospace science, told the Global Times that the success of the Apollo Program (1961-1972) helped the US to outcompete Soviet Union, but it also cost the US countless economic and technological resources. Therefore, after the lunar landing, the US shifted its focus from the moon to the space shuttle, space station project, Mars exploration and other projects.

In recent years, many countries, including China and India, have developed rapidly in the space industry, putting pressure on the US. Especially after China made a breakthrough with its Chang'e-5 unmanned lunar mission, which brought back lunar soil samples.

Hours before the scheduled launch, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian stressed on Monday that the outer space is not an arena for countries to wrestle, but an important field for win-win cooperation. And the exploration and peaceful use of outer space is the common cause of mankind and should be pursued for the benefit of all mankind.

Zhao's remarks were viewed as a response to NASA's Administrator Bill Nelson who has recently expressed "concerns" about the "space race" that China would arrive first and claim the moon's territory. If NASA's following missions are carried out as scheduled, US astronauts could land on the moon again as soon as 2025, five years earlier than China's plan.

China has always been committed to the peaceful use of outer space and has conducted extensive cooperation with other countries to safeguard outer space security, Zhao said, noting that China hopes all countries will continue to work together to promote the peaceful use of outer space and make greater contribution to the building of a community with a shared future for mankind.

Beachgoers wait for the launch of the Artemis I unmanned lunar rocket, in Florida. Photos: AFP

Arduous task

According to NASA, the Orion will reach a retrograde orbit around the moon, traveling 2.1 million kilometers in 42 days. The mission will test the heat shield function of Orion capsule, and carry some small satellites to be placed in moon's orbit.

If everything about the Artemis I mission goes on well, the second scheduled flight, the Artemis II is expected to launch SLS megarocket around the moon as early as 2024, testing key systems of the Orion spacecraft with humans on board.

The Artemis III launch date is set for 2025 if the previous programs go as plan. Besides, space experts said optimistic progress on new spacesuit development and human landing systems are also necessary.

However, according to evaluation from NASA's inspector general office, due to anticipated delay of the spacesuit development, NASA's hopeful timeline is "not only unlikely, but even impossible."

Besides, the Lunar Gateway, a human-tended space station orbiting the moon that provides necessary support for long-term human return to lunar surface and a staging point for deep space exploration, has dragged the two Artemis missions to an "unsustainable crawl," due to its building cost, according to the Hill.

Citing NASA's Inspector General, CNBC reported that the space agency is projected to spend $93 billion on the Artemis up to the fiscal year 2025. And the cost of a single SLS launch is about $4.1 billion, which NASA inspector general Paul Martin expressed his concern and described it as "unsustainable."

Wang Yanan, chief editor of Beijing-based Aerospace Knowledge magazine, told the Global Times on Monday that "return to the moon" will not be an easy task for the US despite its advancement in science and technology.

With so much money invested in Mars exploration and the International Space Station missions, it is doubtful that there will be sufficient and timely resources to achieve America's challenging goals of returning to moon in 2025, Wang said.

To cope with difficulties, the US has involved commercial space efforts. US media said that Elon Musk's SpaceX, which has participated in Artemis III mission's landing site selection, plans to build a vehicle that will land US astronauts on the lunar surface. Besides, NASA also had its astronauts visiting SpaceX facilities for hardware tests.

Involving commercial efforts showed NASA's forward-looking vision, but whether NASA has a set of efficient management mechanism of regulating these enterprises is uncertain. For NASA, it may be about engineering and technical maturity and reliability, but companies may be more concerned about share price and financing, Wang said.

'Space race'

In an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, NASA's Administrator Bill Nelson said that China's space ambitions have provided motivation for Artemis, according to the New York Times. Nelson said he doesn't want Chinese astronauts to arrive first and claim the territory and resources, describing that there's a "space race" between the two countries.

In an interview with a German newspaper in July, Nelson smeared China for "trying to take over the moon" and saying China's mentality is like "it's ours now and you stay out."

Experts said Nelson's inflammatory remarks are full of smears against China, which is actually not as fast as the US in scheduled time for landing on the moon. CASC disclosed on August 21 that China's new-generation manned rocket, which is currently under development, will possess the capability to send taikonauts to the moon by around 2030.

The SLS-level megarocket is still under development in China, but in the US, one is now standing on the launchpad, a senior Chinese expert on aerospace science and technology based in Beijing, told the Global Times on condition of anonymity.

The malicious speculation and smearing of China from Nelson are totally ill-intentioned, the expert said, "Since the dawn of the age of human exploration of space, no country has ever claimed some of the resources of outer space, especially when there's regulation from UN framework convention on cooperation in outer space."

By using such colonialist rhetoric to smear China, the US wants to pressure countries interested in cooperating with China in space, and force some countries to take sides on the issue of space exploration, the expert told the Global Times on Monday.

China has its own pace and has no interest in competing with the US to land on the moon faster, the Beijing-based expert said. "China hopes to make lunar exploration a long-term and internationally cooperative project. China's larger goal is to benefit more people rather than to compete for resources like the US."

In January, China and Russia revealed a plan to jointly build a moon base by 2027, media reported. Dubbed the International Lunar Research Station, it will be a complex of research facilities for moon exploration, observation and experiment.

Some other developing countries do not have the technical capacity and economic resources to build an outer space exploration program from scratch, but the cooperation between China and Russia will give more developing countries the opportunity to participate, he said.

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China's top space contractor CASC reveals new launch vehicle able to send Chinese to Moon by around 2030

Long March-5 Y5 carrier rocket commissioned for the Chang'e-5 lunar mission has started fuel injection and is set to launch the probe on Nov 24, 2020, between 4 to 5 am at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in South China's Hainan Province. Photo: VCG

China's new-generation manned rocket, which is currently under development, will possess the capability to send taikonauts to the Moon by around 2030, Global Times has learned from China's state-owned space giant China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC).

A CASC spokesperson made the remarks to the media after the Long March 2D carrier rocket smoothly sent the remote sensing Yaogan-35 04 group of satellites on early Saturday morning, which saw the country's Long March rocket series breaking its own record with 103 consecutive successful space launch missions.

According to the CASC spokesperson, the country's super heavy-lift launch vehicle, which is also under development, will receive further strengthening to become capable of sending payloads of 50 tons to the Earth-Moon transfer orbit on completion, in order to support future lunar activity.

CASC is also working on a series of reusable space launch and transport systems, which will greatly boost the country's space shuttle capability, lowering costs and empowering future development in this domain, the spokesperson said, per a statement the CASC provided to the Global Times.

Meanwhile, the US is busy preparing for the launch of the massive Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which is set to take place on the morning of August 29 [US local time] from the US Kennedy Space Center for the Artemis I mission - the first test of NASA's deep space exploration systems.

The Artemis I, according to the US space center, will be the first in a series of missions to demonstrate NASA's ability to extend human existence to the Moon and beyond.

The US series' first crewed flight, the Artemis III, will see boots on the lunar surface no earlier than 2026, more than half a century since NASA successfully sent humans to the moon in December 1972 in the Apollo 17 mission.

The US website space.com pointed out in an article on Friday that the 2026 mission is still "highly uncertain," given that the mission is relatively far away, but NASA does have some early-stage planning for the later 2020s.

The timeline for these missions depends a great deal on how much funding the agency receives from US Congress, along with the technical progress of the Artemis program, the report said.

Even if NASA could pull off the ambitious plan, it would already be a two-year delay as the US space agency has abandoned its original goal of sending humans to the moon by 2024.

Drawing a comparison between the lunar manned landing plans of China and the US, Chinese space experts pointed out that the US' practice of setting specific year deadlines is very rare in the industry, given the complex nature of deep space exploration, while China focuses more on technology readiness in a rather broad time frame, going forward steadily and surely.

China's crewed moon landing is more in line with scientific principles, but NASA might grow more hostile against China in the space domain given the huge pressure it is facing to maintain its global leadership in moon exploration, Wang Ya'nan, chief editor of the Beijing-based Aerospace Knowledge magazine, told the Global Times on Sunday, when asked if there would be a new space race between space powers around 2030. 

NASA chief Bill Nelson warned in July of a new "space race" with China, in a groundless accusation that China wants to "occupy the moon," citing the lunar research base that China and Russia are co-building, which he is "very concerned about."

It is very likely that in order to meet the goals of the Artemis mission, given its tight timeline, NASA will further open management access of the International Space Station (ISS) to commercial space players such as SpaceX after 2024, as Russia has warned of its intention to pull out from the ISS by that year, and shift focus and resources to its lunar plans, Wang noted.

Space observers also pointed out that as NASA is trying hard to relive its Apollo glories, China is working on innovative plans to carry out its own crewed moon landing missions.

Even without the new-generation manned rocket and super-heavy lift launch vehicle, leading Chinese rocket scientist Long Lehao revealed in August 2021, China could use two rocket launches to send two taikonauts to the moon by around 2030.

Long, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and chief designer of the Long March rockets, said during a speech that China was planning to use new variants of the Long March-5 launch vehicle - the strongest member of the Long March rocket family - to carry out the manned space launch missions.

Long referred to the new variant as Long March-5 DY, which stands for "dengyue," meaning "lunar landing" in Chinese.

Two rockets carrying a lunar lander and a next-generation manned spaceship will be launched for the mission, and the two parts of the spacecraft will rendezvous and dock in near-lunar orbit, before executing the landing process. The two taikonauts are expected to work on the moon's surface for some six hours, according to Long. However, there is no mention of a specific landing site.

The new manned spaceship will then take off from the moon and carry out another docking with the orbiting module before heading back to Earth. 

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From Mars to the moon, Chinese Kylin computer operating system

China reveals the computer system powering its space missions.

Chinese researchers developed the Kylin operating system to replace the Western products the country relied on. Sending it into space meant combining security, reliability and performance, engineers say. — SCMP

From Mars to the moon: the computer system behind China's space missions.

WHETHER it is China’s rover on Mars, its space station orbiting the Earth or its moon probe bringing back lunar samples, one littleknown system is behind them all. 

The core of the Kylin computer operating system has been guarded as a national secret and its use in the country’s space programme has only just been officially confirmed.

Its main codes were written by Chinese military researchers, according to developer China Electronics Corporation (CEC), but it also includes elements of Unix-like software FREEBSD, parts from Linux, and a user interface similar to Windows.

It is a hybrid, like the mythical qilin dragon beast it is named after.

Speaking to state media, members of the Kylin development team revealed the role the operating system played in these missions, coordinating communication between artificial intelligence software, human controllers on the ground and all the hardware on board the spacecraft.

Until about a decade ago, China, like most other countries, relied on Linux and Windows to drive its space programmes, according to a paper published in domestic journal Space Industry Management last year.

From 2008, China’s space authorities started to replace Western software and hardware in satellites and spacecraft.

The process sped up after Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 about US hacking activities.

Kylin was one of the results – along with the Zhanxing, or Warring Star, system developed by the Chinese military’s space force, according to the paper.

Dan Jianqun, a lead scientist with CEC’S Kylin project, said China had no other choice but to develop its operating system.

“Using other people’s systems, to quote President Xi (Jinping), is like building a house on other people’s land.

“It can be large and beautiful, but it can also be destroyed overnight,” he said in an interview on state television.

The transition from western to home-made software was full of challenges, according to some of the software engineers involved.

Liu Jun, a software engineer on the Kylin team, said space missions required not only high security, but reliability and performance.

 The Kylin OS system is used in China’s space programme. Photo: CCTV

 Liu said Kylin was initially developed for computers on the ground.

To go to space, processing times on certain tasks had to be cut to less than a third, he told the state television.

“It was as difficult as compressing a packet of biscuits into a few grams without losing any nutrition,” Liu said.

The space mission sometimes also required the operating system to execute a specific task without being distracted by lower priorities, and many codes were written to meet these needs, said Liu.

Kylin’s first tests were demanding. No one had landed on the far side of the moon. And no country had put a rover on Mars without failure.

Liu Hongyu, another Kylin engineer, said the team was under extreme stress when these missions reached a critical stage. “We were just praying. When the spacecraft landed, the whole building rocked with applause,” he said. Kylin is now the most widely used operating system in the Chinese government and military, according to previous state media reports. When its first version was released in 2006, the system came under a lot of criticism for its poor user experience and its lack of compatible software.

But Kylin worked well with domestically developed computer chips such as the Loongson CPU. As the Chinese government began replacing Intel chips and Windows systems in the military, government, banks and other sensitive sectors, the Kylin user base grew rapidly.

But some challenges remained. One issue was hardware adaptability. China still used a lot of scientific equipment from the West and many devices were not compatible with Kylin. In addition, most software on the Kylin system is displayed in Chinese.

Any foreign astronauts planning to take up China’s offer to visit its space station will need to learn some Chinese or they will be confused by the characters on the screen of every Kylin device, including the tablets. – South China Morning Post

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Chinese unmanned lunar orbiter returns home

Experimental orbiter prepares for home trip - CCTV News - CCTV.com English 

China's unmanned lunar orbiter returns home - CCTV News - CCTV.com English

China succeeded Saturday in the world's first mission to the Moon and back in some 40 years, becoming the third nation to do so after the former Soviet Union and the United States.

The test lunar orbiter, nicknamed "Xiaofei" on Chinese social networks, landed in Siziwang Banner of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region early Saturday morning.

Search teams have already recovered the orbiter at the designated landing area, about 500 kilometers away from Beijing.

Launched Friday last week, the orbiter traversed 840,000 kilometers on its eight-day mission that saw it round the far side of the Moon and take some incredible pictures of Earth and Moon together.

The re-entry process began at around 6:13 a.m. Saturday morning, with the orbiter approaching Earth at a velocity of about 11.2 kilometers per second.

The high speed led to hefty friction between the orbiter and air and high temperatures on the craft's exterior, generating an ion sheath that cut off contact between ground command and the orbiter.

To help it slow down, the craft is designed to "bounce" off the edge of the atmosphere, before re-entering again. The process has been compared to a stone skipping across water, and can shorten the "braking distance" for the orbiter, according to Zhou Jianliang, chief engineer with the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center.

"Really, this is like braking a car," said Zhou, "The faster you drive, the longer the distance you need to bring the car to a complete stop."

The "bounce" was one of the biggest challenges of the mission, because the craft must enter the atmosphere at a very precise angle. An error of 0.2 degrees would have rendered the mission a failure.

Wu Yanhua, vice director of China's State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, said the successful test mission has gathered a lot of experimental data and laid a solid foundation for future missions.`  

Paving way for new probe

The eight-day program is a test run for the final chapter of China's three-step--orbiting, landing and finally returning--lunar program.

"Xiaofei" is obtaining data and validating re-entry technology such as the heat shield and trajectory design for a future landing on the moon by Chang'e-5.

Earlier reports said Chang'e-5 will be launched around 2017. The goal is to collect samples from the Moon and return to Earth. If successful, China will become the third nation to do so.

Calling "Xiaofei" a pathfinder for Chang'e-5, Zhou Jianliang said the data acquired by the lunar orbiter will optimize technology for Chang'e-5.

Hao Xifan, deputy chief of China's third phase lunar exploration program, also said the mission validated ground support capacities, craft landing technology and recoverable spacecraft technology.

According to Wu Weiren, chief designer of China's lunar exploration program, Chang'e-5 is expected to collect a 2-kg sample from two meters under the Moon's surface and bring it home.

Aside from the high-speed re-entry, major technological challenges for the craft center on surface sampling, taking off from the Moon, and lunar orbit rendezvous, Wu said.

READY TO MAKE HISTORY, AGAIN

China launched a pair of orbiting lunar probes and last year landed a craft on the moon with a rover on board.

Saturday's success is another step forward for China's ambition that could eventually land a Chinese citizen there. Few countries can rival China's space program although China never intended to participate in any "space race".

In an earlier interview with Xinhua, Wu Weiren said lunar probe technology and software could be of great economic value if adapted for commercial use.

Commercial gains aside, the space program is already a marker of China's global stature and technical expertise. The Chang'e lunar probes - named after a goddess who took her pet Yutu, or jade rabbit, to the moon - are a symbol of great national pride.

The country sent its first astronaut into space in 2003, becoming the third nation after Russia and the U.S. to achieve manned space travel independently. In 2008, astronauts aboard the Shenzhou-7 made China's first space walk. There are plans for a permanent space station, expected to be set up around 2022.

The Chang'e-1 and Chang'e-2 missions in 2007 and 2010 respectively, capped the orbital phase of the three step project. Chang'e-1 crashed onto the Moon's surface at the end of its mission, and Chang'e-2 was sent into deep space to become China's first man-made asteroid.

The ongoing second phase saw Chang'e-3 soft land on the moon carrying moon rover Yutu in December 2013. Chang'e-4 was a backup for Chang'e-3 and has not been deployed.

In the meantime, Yutu has entered its 11th dormancy earlier October, although its functions have degraded considerably after it encountered control issues in January this year. Experts had feared that it might never function again, but Yutu has stubbornly managed to wake up from its sleep mode ever since.

None of those missions were intended to return to Earth and this has pushed the 2017 mission further into spotlight.

"The Chang'e-5 mission will be yet another historic moment for China's lunar program," Wu said.

(Xinhua)

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Standard faces for each countries

Learn and look to China for space technology

The Jade Rabbit moon rover is seen in a picture taken by a camera on board the Chang'e-3 probe lander on December 15, 2013 (CCTV/AFP, CCTV)

IT was a fitting tribute to China for successfully landing a lunar rover on the moon on Dec 14.
The Chinese people must be proud of their achievement for it was the Chinese who invented the gun powder which was a precursor to the rocket.

Not only China, but all developing countries or the Third World shared the joy and achievement which was thought impossible to be achieved by a developing country.

Being a superpower, it is only right that China should take its place beside the United States and Russia in space exploration.

The country has come a long way since the infamous Cultural Revolution to show its might in science and technology.

It has paved the way for other developing countries to emulate China’s feat, which may not ­necessarily be in space exploration.

The successful lunar rover touched down “... on an ancient 400km wide plain ...” has restored the great civilisation that it had, long before other countries had invented rudimentary science and technology.

By landing its lunar probe on the moon, China had put smiles on all her past emperors and leaders who had painstakenly built the great nation which is now the envy of many.

Perhaps Malaysia will now look at China too besides the US and Russia in acquiring space technology by sending more students and scientists there.

Since the bamboo curtain has been dismantled, there is much that China can offer Malaysia in space science.


By HASSAN TALIB Gombak, Selangor, Malaysia

China 'ready' to launch Mars mission

Photo: Xinhua

China is likely to expand its horizon in space travel by possible Mars exploration, expert said.

After the unmanned Chang'e-3 successfully completed its soft-landing on the moon, people from both home and abroad have been wondering whether China will send probes to Mars, which has become a key goal for many foreign space organizations.

According to the chief designer of China's lunar probe program, Wu Weiren, China is ready.

"We have the potential to go there in the wake of the successes of the Chang'e-1 and Chang'e-2 missions," Wu said at a news conference held in Beijing on Tuesday, adding that the final decision is up to the government, Xinhua News Agency reported.

"We follow our own approach that respects stable progress and dislikes rash and reckless moves," he said. "We don't want to compete with any country in this regard."

Wu added that the Long March-5 rocket series with the maximum thrust of 1,100 tons can ensure the sending of a Martian probe.

"In terms of the carrying capacity of the rocket and the tracking and control system, China is capable of sending Martian probes," Pang Zhihao, a research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Space Technology, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Pang said that the two deep space monitoring stations in China have shown their ability tracking Chang'e 2, which is about 64 million kilometers from Earth.

"But China still needs to build deep space monitoring stations abroad to make up for blind measurements to track deep space detectors round the clock," Pang said.

Furthermore, as scientists around the world have been exploring the possibility of living on the moon, the research on bioregenerative life support systems, which hold much promise for planetary bases, has been conducted in China.

The Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics has recently been praised for its work on closed ecological systems suitable for growing plants in outer space, according to the university's website.

Wu also noted that compared with the US spending 2 to 2.5 percent of GDP on its lunar exploration program at that time, China's input - only a few ten-thousands of the country's GDP - is not very much.

Besides, only about 40 percent of the 118 lunar probe attempts by the US and the Soviet Union during the space race in the 1960s and 1970s had been successful, while China's Chang'e-1 to Chang'e-3 missions have all succeeded, he said.

Although China has not officially announced any intention to fly a human mission to the moon, the door is now open and - if they have the will - nothing will stand in their way, said James Longuskian, associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics .

Contributed By Fang Yang Global Times

 Related post:

China's lunar probe Chang'e-3 landing on the Moon a success

China's lunar probe Chang'e-3 landing on the Moon a success

China´s first attempt at lunar soft-landing succeeds CCTV News - CNTV English

China's first lunar rover separates from Chang'e-3 moon lander early December 15, 2013. Picture was taken from the screen of the Beijing Aerospace Control Center in Beijing, capital of China. Photo: Xinhua

Photographs of the Chang’e-3 probe (inset) and Yutu lunar rover taken by each other at the Bay of Rainbows on the surface of the moon on Sunday. Photos: IC

The Chang'e-3 probe and its moon rover separated before taking photos of each other on the moon's surface on Sunday, marking a "complete success" of the Chang'e-3 mission, Ma Xingrui, chief commander of the lunar program, announced on Sunday night.

The moon rover, Yutu, took photos with a panoramic camera at five points at a distance of 10 meters when moving around the probe, while the probe also took pictures of the rover with its landform camera and then sent them back to Earth, said Sun Zezhou, chief designer of the lunar probe.

The pictures of the moon's landscape and the probe and rover on it, carrying China's national flag, mark the country's first soft-landing on the surface of an extraterrestrial body.

Yutu, which traveled at 200 meters per hour, will start a three-month research mission on the moon, examining the moon's soil construction, landform and material composition, according to the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.

Yutu was deployed from the probe and tracked on the moon's surface at around 4:45 am on Sunday, approximately seven and half hours after the successful soft-landing of the probe.

China became the third country to do so after the US and Soviet Union. The last such mission was made by the Soviet Union in 1976.

The probe touched down on an area named Sinus Iridum, or the Bay of Rainbows, as planned. The landing process started at 9 pm on Saturday and lasted for about 12 minutes, according to China Central Television's live broadcast.

Chang'e-3's landing is the second step of the three key stages of China's lunar program. The third step will involve bringing samples back to  Earth for closer analysis.

News of the landing quickly made an impact on China's hugely popular social media, topping the list of searched items, as many commented in the style of the famous Neil Armstrong remark, "one giant leap for mankind."

The successful soft-landing of Chang'e-3 attracted the world's attention, as some scientists compared China's interest in the moon to that of many other countries in exploiting resources in Antarctica, saying such scenarios depend "entirely on the business case," the AFP reported.

Jiao Weixin, a professor at the School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University, told the Global Times on Sunday that the lunar program mainly focuses on its scientific purpose rather than the economic purpose, which Western media reported.

Although the moon may have rich mineral and energy resources, such as helium-3, and China's moon research did include examining such resources, "it is still unrealistic for any country to profit from the moon's resources in the near future considering the technology and cost," he said. 

However, Jiao didn't rule out the possibility of developing moon resources in the future, which should be "many" years away.

During the online interview on the program's official Weibo account, Liu Jianzhong, a research fellow from the Institute of Geochemistry with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Net users that whoever is capable of developing the moon's resources first should reap the benefits.

 China's "Jade Rabbit" separates from lander

China's first moon rover, Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, separated from the lander early on Sunday, several hours after the Chang'e-3 probe soft-landed on the lunar surface.

The 140 kg six-wheeled rover touched the lunar surface at 4:35 am, leaving deep trace on the loose lunar soil. The process was recorded by the camera on the lander and the images were sent to the earth, according to the Beijing Aerospace Control Center.

After the separation, the rover and lander will take photos of each other and start their own scientific explorations.

Engineers made final checks of the environment of the landing site, the situation of the probe and the solar incidence angle late night on Saturday and sent signals of separation to Chang'e-3.

Yutu, atop the probe, extended its solar panel and started to drive slowly to the transfer mechanism at 3:10.

The transfer mechanism unlocked at 4:06 with one side reaching the moon's surface, allowing the rover to descend to the surface following a ladder mechanism.

Chang'e-3 landed on the moon's Sinus Iridum, or the Bay of Rainbows, at 9:11 pm Saturday, making China the third country in the world to carry out such a rover mission after the United States and former Soviet Union.

In ancient Chinese mythology, Yutu was the white pet rabbit of the lunar goddess Chang'e. The name for the rover was selected following an online poll that collected several million votes from people around the world.

The rover, 1.5 meters long with its two wings folded, 1 m in width and 1.1 m in height, is a highly efficient robot controlled by the command center from the earth. It will face challenges including temperature differences of more than 300 degrees Celsius on the moon.

Yutu will survey the moon's geological structure and surface substances and look for natural resources for three months, while the lander will conduct in-situ exploration at the landing site for one year. - Xinhua

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China launches probe and rover to moon 

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Backgrounder: China's "triple jump" progress in lunar probes
Backgrounder: Timeline of China's lunar program
Special Report: China's lunar explorations
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