China’s Chang’e 5 enters lunar orbit for historic attempt to return moon samples

China’s Chang’e 5 spacecraft has entered orbit around the moon ahead of an historic attempt to collect samples from the moon and return to Earth.

The 18,100-lb. (8,200 kilograms) Chang’e 5 launched on a Long March 5 rocket on Monday (Nov. 23) from the country’s Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on Hainan Island and reached the moon today (Nov. 28) after an 112-hour journey.

The Chang’e 5 orbiter module fired its main engine at 7:58 a.m. EST (1258 UTC; 8:58 p.m. Beijing time) when 249 miles (400 kilometers) away from the moon, the China Lunar Exploration Program announced just under an hour later.

The spacecraft fired its 3,000-Newton engine for around 17 minutes. This slowed the spacecraft down enough to allow it to be captured by the moon’s gravity.

The maneuver is a major step in the 23-day Chang’e mission that aims to deliver fresh lunar samples to Earth in mid-December. No such mission has been attempted since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission in 1976.

During its journey to the moon radio enthusiasts have been tracking the spacecraft, and even managed to decode data sent back to Earth, revealing footage showing sunlight shining on a solar panel.

In the near future the mission lander will separate from Chang’e 5 orbiter and attempt to land near Mons Rümker in the western hemisphere of the moon. China has not released a time and date for the landing attempt, but lighting from the sun over the designated landing would allow an attempt as early as Sunday.

Mons Rümker is a peak with the huge volcanic plain of Oceanus Procellarum (“Ocean of Storms”). Some areas around the site are believed by scientists to be made of rock that is just over 1 billion years old. It is thought these areas were created by geologically recent volcanism and thus show fewer craters than older regions. By contrast the samples collected by the U.S. Apollo and Soviet Luna missions are all over 3 billion years old.

The lander is equipped with both a drill and a scoop. Together they will collect around 4.4 lbs (2 kilograms) of lunar material which will be placed in a container aboard an ascent vehicle atop the lander. Around two days after the landing the ascent vehicle will take off and attempt to rendezvous and dock with the orbiter module waiting in lunar orbit.

Once docked, the ascent vehicle will transfer the sample container to a reentry capsule attached to the orbiter. The orbiter will subsequently begin the roughly 4.5-day trip back to Earth and release the reentry capsule just before arrival.

If all goes according to plan the Chang’e 5 reentry capsule will perform a ‘skip reentry’ bouncing off the atmosphere once before finally reentering the atmosphere. It will then parachute to the ground within a designated area in Inner Mongolia between Dec.15-17.

Getting hold of samples would allow scientists to confirm the age of the rocks using radiometric dating methods. This would also allow scientists to compare similarly cratered areas on major rocky bodies in the solar system to get more accurate estimates of their ages and histories.

The mission is China’s sixth and by far most complex lunar mission. The country has launched two lunar orbiters, Chang’e 1 and 2, and two landers and rovers for the Chang’e 3 and Chang’e 4 missions. The ongoing Chang’e 4 mission made the first ever landing on the far side of the moon in January 2019.

The Chang’e 5T1 mission practiced the high-speed return from the moon and skip reentry in 2014. The mission’s orbiter also imaged the landing site for the Chang’e 5 mission proper.

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that Chang’e 5 mission scientists would use radiocarbon dating on the lunar samples returned. They will actually use radiometric dating methods.

https://www.space.com/china-chang-e-5-moon-sample-return-lunar-orbit

dv said:

China’s Chang’e 5 enters lunar orbit for historic attempt to return moon samples

China’s Chang’e 5 spacecraft has entered orbit around the moon ahead of an historic attempt to collect samples from the moon and return to Earth.

The 18,100-lb. (8,200 kilograms) Chang’e 5 launched on a Long March 5 rocket on Monday (Nov. 23) from the country’s Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on Hainan Island and reached the moon today (Nov. 28) after an 112-hour journey.

The Chang’e 5 orbiter module fired its main engine at 7:58 a.m. EST (1258 UTC; 8:58 p.m. Beijing time) when 249 miles (400 kilometers) away from the moon, the China Lunar Exploration Program announced just under an hour later.

The spacecraft fired its 3,000-Newton engine for around 17 minutes. This slowed the spacecraft down enough to allow it to be captured by the moon’s gravity.

The maneuver is a major step in the 23-day Chang’e mission that aims to deliver fresh lunar samples to Earth in mid-December. No such mission has been attempted since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission in 1976.

During its journey to the moon radio enthusiasts have been tracking the spacecraft, and even managed to decode data sent back to Earth, revealing footage showing sunlight shining on a solar panel.

In the near future the mission lander will separate from Chang’e 5 orbiter and attempt to land near Mons Rümker in the western hemisphere of the moon. China has not released a time and date for the landing attempt, but lighting from the sun over the designated landing would allow an attempt as early as Sunday.

Mons Rümker is a peak with the huge volcanic plain of Oceanus Procellarum (“Ocean of Storms”). Some areas around the site are believed by scientists to be made of rock that is just over 1 billion years old. It is thought these areas were created by geologically recent volcanism and thus show fewer craters than older regions. By contrast the samples collected by the U.S. Apollo and Soviet Luna missions are all over 3 billion years old.

The lander is equipped with both a drill and a scoop. Together they will collect around 4.4 lbs (2 kilograms) of lunar material which will be placed in a container aboard an ascent vehicle atop the lander. Around two days after the landing the ascent vehicle will take off and attempt to rendezvous and dock with the orbiter module waiting in lunar orbit.

Once docked, the ascent vehicle will transfer the sample container to a reentry capsule attached to the orbiter. The orbiter will subsequently begin the roughly 4.5-day trip back to Earth and release the reentry capsule just before arrival.

If all goes according to plan the Chang’e 5 reentry capsule will perform a ‘skip reentry’ bouncing off the atmosphere once before finally reentering the atmosphere. It will then parachute to the ground within a designated area in Inner Mongolia between Dec.15-17.

Getting hold of samples would allow scientists to confirm the age of the rocks using radiometric dating methods. This would also allow scientists to compare similarly cratered areas on major rocky bodies in the solar system to get more accurate estimates of their ages and histories.

The mission is China’s sixth and by far most complex lunar mission. The country has launched two lunar orbiters, Chang’e 1 and 2, and two landers and rovers for the Chang’e 3 and Chang’e 4 missions. The ongoing Chang’e 4 mission made the first ever landing on the far side of the moon in January 2019.

The Chang’e 5T1 mission practiced the high-speed return from the moon and skip reentry in 2014. The mission’s orbiter also imaged the landing site for the Chang’e 5 mission proper.

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that Chang’e 5 mission scientists would use radiocarbon dating on the lunar samples returned. They will actually use radiometric dating methods.

https://www.space.com/china-chang-e-5-moon-sample-return-lunar-orbit

Great news. China isn’t great on immediate feedback on space missions via the web. Let’s hope this is different.

“China has not released a timeline of events for its lunar sample return mission Chang’e-5”.

:-(

> Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that Chang’e 5 mission scientists would use radiocarbon dating on the lunar samples returned. They will actually use radiometric dating methods.

PMSL

“The lander will carry landing cameras, a panoramic camera, a spectrometer to determine mineral composition, a soil gas analytical instrument, a soil composition analytical instrument, a sampling sectional thermo-detector, and a ground-penetrating radar. For acquiring samples, it will be equipped with a robotic arm, a rotary-percussive drill, a scoop for sampling, and separation tubes to isolate individual samples.”

“the ascent portion will lift off from the surface, rendezvous with the main spacecraft, and transfer the samples into the sample return capsule.”

So, Lunar rendezvous. The overall arrangement of service module and lander is reminiscent of Apollo. Here the service module contains the sample return capsule in its nose cone, like Apollo did for return of astronauts.

https://www.planetary.org/space-missions/change-5

“The specific landing site, near a 70-kilometer-wide mound named Mons Rümker. The spacecraft consists of 4 pieces: a service module, a lander, an ascent vehicle, and an Earth return module. In lunar orbit, the lander and ascent module will descend to the surface, while the service module and Earth return module remain in orbit. The lander will collect samples using a mechanical scoop and a drill that can burrow 2 meters underground. Up to 4 kilograms of lunar material will be deposited in the ascent vehicle.

“The Chang’e-5 lander also carries 3 scientific payloads. A suite of cameras will document the landing site, a ground-penetrating radar will map the subsurface, and a spectrometer will determine the mineralogical composition of the landing site and calculate how much water is locked in the lunar soil.

“Chang’e-5 will land in the lunar morning and blast the ascent vehicle back into orbit before nightfall—a period of roughly 14 Earth days. The ascent vehicle will rendezvous with the service module and transfer the samples into an Earth-return capsule.”

China’s Chang’e 5 probe returns to Earth with first new Moon rock samples in more than 40 years
A Chinese lunar capsule has returned to Earth with the first fresh samples of rock and debris from the Moon in more than 40 years.
The capsule from China’s Chang’e 5 probe landed in the Siziwang district of the Inner Mongolia region, state media reported shortly after 2:00am local time on Thursday.
The capsule earlier separated from its orbiter module and performed a bounce off the Earth’s atmosphere to reduce its speed before passing through and floating to the ground on parachutes.
Two of the Chang’e 5’s four modules set down on the Moon on December 1 and collected about 2 kilograms of samples by scooping them from the surface and by drilling 2 metres into the Moon’s crust.
The samples were deposited in a sealed container that was carried back to the return module by an ascent vehicle.
The successful mission was the latest breakthrough for China’s increasingly ambitious space program that includes a robotic mission to Mars and plans for a permanent orbiting space station.

Recovery crews had prepared helicopters and off-road vehicles to home-in on signals emitted by the lunar spacecraft and locate it in the darkness shrouding the vast snow-covered region in China’s far north, long used as a landing site for China’s Shenzhou crewed spaceships.

The spacecraft’s return marked the first time scientists had obtained fresh samples of lunar rocks since the former Soviet Union’s Luna 24 robot probe in 1976.

The newly collected rocks are thought to be billions of years younger than those obtained earlier by the US and former Soviet Union, offering new insights into the history of the Moon and other bodies in the solar system

They come from a part of the Moon known as the Oceanus Procellarum, or Ocean of Storms, near a site called the Mons Rumker that was believed to have been volcanic in ancient times.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-17/china-change-5-probe-returns-to-earth-with-moon-rocks/12992444

2 metres eh? These will be the freshest samples ever returned from the moon.