| Title | China's Chang'e-5 Successfully Lands on Moon to Collect Samples | |
| Date | Tuesday December 01 2020, @11:25PM | |
| Author | martyb | |
| Topic | ||
| from the dept. | ||
China's Chang'e-5 successfully lands on moon to collect samples:
In the next two days, the lander will collect about two kilograms of lunar samples.
The Chang'e-5 probe includes a lander, ascender, orbiter, and returner. After the spacecraft entered the circular lunar orbit 200 kilometers above the moon, the lander-and-ascender pair split, descended, and landed at the planned area on the moon.
The lander will shovel some surface material and also drill a two-meter-deep hole and scoop up the soil from inside it, which will act like an archive of the moon, with the bottom recording information from a billion years ago and the top more closely reflecting the present day.
The samples will then be stored in the ascender, which will lift off from the lunar surface to transfer the moon samples to the returner and orbiter waiting in the lunar orbit. The unmanned rendezvous and docking in the lunar orbit will also be the first such task conducted by China.
Then, at a proper time, the returner will separate from the orbiter and carry the samples back to Earth, which will finally land in North China's Inner Mongolia.
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printed from SoylentNews, China's Chang'e-5 Successfully Lands on Moon to Collect Samples on 2024-04-20 09:33:56