Enlarge / A Lengthy March 8 rocket, standing 165 ft (50 meters) tall, rolled out of its meeting constructing to its launch pad Sunday on the Wenchang House Launch Web site.
The following part of China’s Moon program started with the launch of a brand new knowledge relay satellite tv for pc Monday to hyperlink lunar landers and rovers on the far aspect of the Moon with floor controllers again on Earth.
This launch despatched China’s Queqiao-2 relay spacecraft towards the Moon, the place it’s going to enter an elliptical orbit and place itself for the arrival of China’s subsequent robotic lunar lander, Chang’e 6, later this yr.
A medium-lift Lengthy March 8 rocket carried the Queqiao-2 spacecraft aloft from the Wenchang launch base, positioned on Hainan Island in southern China. This was the third flight of the kerosene-fueled Lengthy March 8, one in all a brand new technology of Chinese language rockets designed to switch older Lengthy March launcher designs burning poisonous propellant.
The Lengthy March 8’s higher stage deployed the Queqiao-2 spacecraft lower than half-hour after liftoff at 8:31 pm EDT (00:31 UTC). Queqiao-2 was anticipated to unfurl photo voltaic panels and perform a sequence of thruster firings to information itself into orbit across the Moon.
Queqiao-2 will maneuver right into a steady “frozen” orbit on the Moon, minimizing gas consumption over the course of its mission. The orientation of Queqiao-2’s elongated orbit will enable the spacecraft to loiter for hours over the touchdown websites Chinese language officers have chosen for the nation’s subsequent sequence of robotic Moon missions.
Two smaller satellites additionally hitched a trip to the Moon on the Lengthy March 8 rocket. Certainly one of these spacecraft is in regards to the measurement of a kitchen oven, the opposite roughly the scale of a small suitcase. Collectively, the Tiandu-1 and Tiandu-2 satellites will conduct inter-satellite ranging exams to validate orbit willpower strategies. The outcomes from these exams will inform Chinese language engineers designing a constellation of information relay and navigation satellites that may very well be in place within the subsequent decade, kind of like a lunar GPS.
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Far-side operations
Scheduled for launch on a heavy-lift Lengthy March 5 rocket in Might, Chang’e 6 would be the first Chinese language lunar lander to depend on the brand new knowledge relay satellite tv for pc. Chang’e 6 will goal a touchdown on the Moon, acquire samples, and return them to Earth, repeating the feat China achieved with the Chang’e 5 pattern return mission in 2020.
Nonetheless, Chang’e 5 landed on the close to aspect of the Moon, with direct line-of-sight communications again to Earth. China’s objective for Chang’e 6 is to collect the primary rocks from the far aspect of the Moon and produce them again for detailed examination in labs on Earth. If profitable, Chang’e 6 would be the first sample-return mission from the lunar far aspect, including a brand new class of specimens to humanity’s stock of Moon rocks.
In 2019, China achieved the primary mushy touchdown on the far aspect of the Moon with the Chang’e 4 mission, itself a near-duplicate of Chang’e 3, which landed on the close to aspect of the Moon in 2013. China constructed the Chang’e 6 spacecraft as a backup for Chang’e 5.
Enlarge / This slide from a presentation by the China Nationwide House Administration reveals a listing of deliberate Chinese language photo voltaic system exploration missions, starting with Queqiao 2.
When it landed in 2019, China’s Chang’e 4 mission used a earlier knowledge relay satellite tv for pc, Queqiao-1, which launched in Might 2018. Weighing greater than 2,600 kilos (1.2 metric tons) totally fueled for launch, Queqiao-2 is a bigger spacecraft, greater than twice the mass of China’s first lunar communications relay station.