Technicians at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center monitor the docking of the Chang’e 5 lunar probe’s ascender with its orbiter-reentry capsule combination on Dec 6. (JIN LIWANG / XINHUA)
Experts and media worldwide have hailed China’s latest lunar mission as a “revolutionary” step forward for deepening humanity’s understanding of lunar history.
Lunar samples collected by China’s Chang’e 5 robotic probe will soon start their journey toward Earth, according to the China National Space Administration.
The rocks and dust from the moon have been delivered from Chang’e 5’s ascender to their final host — the probe’s reentry capsule, which will later bring these to Earth.
If the Chang’e 5 mission is successful, it will make China the third nation in the world to bring lunar samples back after the United States and Russia, and will also make Chang’e 5 the world’s first lunar sample-return mission since August 1976 when the then Soviet Union’s unmanned Luna-24 brought 170.1 grams of lunar samples back to Earth.
Considering the highly sophisticated operation, the 23-day Chang’e 5 mission has become the most difficult and challenging lunar adventure China has ever embarked on, project leaders said.
The CNSA said the craft plans to bring about 2 kilograms of lunar samples back to Earth.
Chinese researchers said that scientific study of the lunar samples to be brought back by the Chang’e 5 mission will help to improve mankind’s knowledge about Earth’s celestial companion, especially its history and resources.
Guo Hongfeng, a researcher at the National Astronomical Observatories under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the biggest scientific value in the Chang’e 5 mission lies in the lunar rocks and soil to be brought back by the robotic probe.
“These stones and dirt record the history of the moon, like how it has been affected by cosmic radiation, how many small asteroid bodies and meteorites have slammed into the lunar surface and how the celestial body has changed after those impacts,” she said.
“Research on lunar samples is one of the most important approaches for us to know about the past, present and future of the moon, and it also helps a lot when scientists investigate the evolutions of other members of our solar system.”
The views are shared by leading scientists and academics in the field around the world. Clive Neal, a geoscientist at the US’ University of Notre Dame in Indiana, said if successful, the mission will mark “the beginning of a new era of robotic sample returns from the moon that will undoubtedly change scientists’ understanding of the planetary body”.
Patrick Michel, planetary scientist at France’s National Center of Scientific Research’s Cote d’Azur Observatory, believed that an analysis of the lunar soil samples is like delving into the ancient memories of the solar system.
Every sample brought back to Earth, from whether the moon or asteroids, helped us better understand the universe, Michel said.
The Chang’e 5 mission to bring back lunar samples is indeed a difficult one, Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported. “If successful, China will become the third country to bring back a lunar sample,” the newspaper said.
Samples from Chang’e 5’s landing site near Mons Ruemker, a raised region in a vast lunar mare called Oceanus Procellarum, also known as the Ocean of Storms, have been of special interest to scientists.
“Recent studies have found that the geological features and volcanic history of the moon are far more complex than previously thought, and many of the most interesting areas have been neither explored nor sampled. One such area is the northern Oceanus Procellarum region, which consists of very young mare materials and hosts one of the largest volcanic complexes on the moon (Mons Ruemker),” researchers at the School of Earth Sciences at China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, Hubei province, wrote in a paper published in 2018.
James Head, a planetary geoscientist at Brown University, said that this area is of particular interest because it could confirm whether the moon was still volcanically active some 1 billion to 2 billion years ago.
The samples, when returned and analyzed, will offer a “treasure trove of new information” that will “revolutionize our understanding of lunar history”, Head added.
Lunar samples also enable researchers to probe the possibility of developing natural resources on the moon, according to Guo of the National Astronomical Observatories.
“Many scientists have mentioned the potential mining of helium-3, because if such an element can be mined and taken back to Earth, it will revolutionize the entire energy and power industries,” the researcher said.
Helium-3, a non-polluting and potent element with almost no radioactive byproduct, is considered by many scientists to be the perfect fusion energy source to replace oil and gas.
Ouyang Ziyuan, a senior adviser to China’s lunar program and its former chief scientist, said that if mining the moon for helium-3 and obtaining nuclear power from it becomes a reality, moon resources could be used to generate power for more than 10,000 years.
Li Xiongyao, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Center for Lunar and Planetary Sciences, said lunar soil also poses a potential hazard to spacecraft and astronauts landing on the moon, so studying its characteristics helps in coming up with precautionary measures.
The Chang’e 5 spacecraft was launched by a Long March 5 rocket from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on the coast of China’s southern island province of Hainan on Nov 24.
On the day, the European Space Agency tweeted its “best wishes for a successful mission”.
Describing the program as the “latest milestone in China’s space missions”, the Associated Press on the same day also briefly looked back on China’s “cautious and incremental” space endeavors this century.
“China prides itself on arriving at this point largely through its own efforts,” it said.
“Pulling off the Chang’e 5 mission would be an impressive feat for any nation,” the press quoted Florida-based expert Stephen Clark of the publication Spaceflight Now as saying.
China’s Chang’e 5 probe has reignited global interest in lunar exploration, said Jessica Flahault, a planetary geologist at the French Center for Petrology and Geochemistry.
CNSA released a photograph on Dec 4 showing the country’s five-star red national flag on the moon.
It is the first time a fabric Chinese national flag has been to the moon. In December 2013 and January 2019, China’s national flag was seen on the moon as an emblem on a spacecraft.
According to a statement published by CNSA, the Chang’e 5 mission intends to fulfill several objectives. In terms of space engineering, it will demonstrate and verify technical plans and apparatus for autonomous lunar sampling and packing, moon-based launching and lunar orbital docking.
The country’s first mission to retrieve samples from an extraterrestrial body marked the end of the third phase of China’s lunar exploration program.
China plans to build a prototype for a lunar scientific research station in the fourth phase of the country’s lunar exploration program, said Wu Weiren, the program’s chief designer.
Xinhua and CGTN contributed to the story.
