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A Chinese space probe on Wednesday began drilling on the
surface of the Moon hours after landing, in an ambitious attempt to
bring back the first lunar samples in four decades.
Beijing has poured billions into its military-run space
programme, with hopes of having a crewed space station by 2022 and
of eventually sending humans to the Moon.
The Chang’e-5 spacecraft — named for the mythical Chinese moon
goddess — touched down on the near side of the Moon on Tuesday, and
is now gathering samples from the surface, the China National Space
Administration said.
Chang’e-5’s goal is to collect lunar rocks and soil to help
scientists learn about the Moon’s origins, formation and volcanic
activity.
If the return journey is successful, China will be only the
third country to have retrieved samples from the Moon, following
the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s.
This is the first such attempt since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24
mission in 1976.
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying on Wednesday
described the mission as “revolutionary in increasing human
understanding of the history of the Moon.”
The probe had finished drilling for samples by Wednesday morning
and is now “gathering surface samples as planned”, China’s National
Space Administration said.
The spacecraft was launched from the country’s southern Hainan
province last week and entered lunar orbit on Saturday after a
112-hour journey.
State broadcaster CCTV showed rows of scientists at mission
control, wearing blue jackets emblazoned with Chinese flags,
monitoring the probe then clapping after it successfully touched
down.
A huge screen at the front of the room displayed images sent by
the probe of the grey lunar surface.
A separate state media video released later showed the probe
drilling into the moon’s surface.
– ‘No easy task’ –
The spacecraft plans to collect two kilograms (4.5 pounds) of
material in a previously unexplored area known as Oceanus
Procellarum — or “Ocean of Storms” — a vast lava plain, according
to the science journal Nature.
The probe was designed to both get samples from the Moon’s
surface, as well as drill a two-meter (7-foot) deep hole and gather
specimens from there, to ensure a diverse collection.
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State media said the craft was preparing for “around 48 hours”
of tasks on the lunar surface.
The samples will then be returned to Earth in a capsule
programmed to land in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region in
December, according to US space agency NASA.
Back on Earth, Chinese scientists are using footage from
Chang’e-5 to reconstruct patches of the Moon’s surface in a lab to
better guide the probe’s movements, CCTV said.
Footage from the broadcaster showed lab staff from the China
Academy of Space Technology wearing augmented reality glasses and
using shovels to shape a sandpit according to contours of the
moon’s surface.
The mission is technically challenging and involves several
innovations not seen during previous attempts at collecting moon
rocks, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics researcher
Jonathan McDowell told AFP last month.
Thomas Zurbuchen, a top official at NASA’s science mission
directorate, congratulated China on the landing.
“This is no easy task,” he tweeted. “When the samples collected
on the Moon are returned to Earth, we hope everyone will benefit
from being able to study this precious cargo that could advance the
international science community.”
– ‘Space dream’ –
Under President Xi Jinping, plans for China’s “space dream”, as
he calls it, have been put into overdrive.
Beijing is looking to finally catch up with the US and Russia
after years of belatedly matching their space milestones.
China launched its first satellite in 1970, while human
spaceflight took decades longer — with Yang Liwei becoming China’s
first “taikonaut” in 2003.
A Chinese lunar rover landed on the far side of
the Moon in January 2019 in a global first that boosted
Beijing’s aspirations to become a space superpower.
The latest probe is among a slew of ambitious targets, which
include creating a powerful rocket capable of delivering payloads
heavier than those NASA and private rocket firm SpaceX can handle,
a lunar base, and a permanently crewed space station.
China’s taikonauts and scientists have also talked up crewed
missions to Mars.
–AFP
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