AFP
Landing on the far side of the Moon of the Chinese probe launched in early May
A probe launched by China at the beginning of May landed on the far side of the Moon in order to collect samples, constituting a step forward for the country’s ambitious program which intends to catch up with the American and Russian leaders.The Chang’e 6 probe , which took off from the Wenchang Space Launch Center, on the tropical island of Hainan (south), landed as planned in the immense South Pole-Aitken basin, one of the largest known impact craters of the solar system, said the Xinhua news agency, citing the Chinese space administration. This 53-day mission launched on May 3 should make it possible, according to the state agency, to take the very first samples on the hidden side of the Moon, a rarely explored region of Earth’s satellite. The probe descended from its orbit about 200 kilometers from the Moon to explore the surface for a landing site, said Huang Wu, an official with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), to state broadcaster CCTV. “The descent to a lower orbit carried some risks, so we needed precise control procedures to place (the probe) on its predefined trajectory,” said Huang Wu. Then, “we had to quickly reduce the relative speed of the probe relative to the Moon (…) to zero in 15 minutes, which required a huge amount of propellant, half the total weight of the probe,” he added. The probe will attempt to collect lunar material and conduct other experiments in its landing zone. To do this, the device will be able to use its drill to recover samples from beneath the surface, as well as its robotic arm to catch of the material, directly on the surface in this case. The process should be completed in the next two days, Xinhua said. Chang’e 6 will then attempt to return from the far side of the Moon. In 2019, China had already placed a machine on the far side of the Moon, but it had not brought back any samples. Scientists estimate that the far side of the Moon — so called because it is invisible from Earth and not because it never captures the sun’s rays — is very promising for research, because its craters are less covered by old lava flows than those of the near and visible side. It could therefore be easier to collect samples there, in order to better understand how the Moon was formed. “The samples collected by Chang’e 6 will have a geological age of around four billion years,” explained Ge Ping, vice director of the China Center for Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering. – Great space ambitions – China has considerably developed its space programs under the presidency of Xi Jinping, injecting billions of dollars into this sector in order to catch up with the American and Russian leaders. It has already recorded several successes, notably the construction of the Tiangong (“Heavenly Palace”) space station where a new crew of three astronauts was sent in April. China has also landed a rover (a small motorized “rover”). on Mars. It is also the third country in the world to have sent a human into space on its own. Beijing aims to send a manned mission to the Moon by 2030 and plans to build a base there. The rapid progress of the Chinese space program, however, arouses concern in Washington. In April, Bill Nelson, the head of NASA, affirmed that the United States was engaged in a “race” with China. “We believe that a lot of what they call their civilian space program is actually a military program,” he told a House spending committee in Washington.bur- sst/acb/lgo
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