The subsequent section of China’s Moon program begins with the launch of a brand new knowledge relay satellite tv for pc Monday to hyperlink lunar landers and rovers on the far facet of the Moon with floor controllers again on Earth.
This launch, set for roughly 8:31 pm EDT (00:31 UTC), will ship China’s Queqiao-2 relay spacecraft towards the Moon, the place it would enter an elliptical orbit and place itself for the arrival of China’s subsequent robotic lunar lander, Chang’e 6, later this 12 months.
A medium-lift Long March 8 rocket will carry the Queqiao-2 spacecraft aloft from the Wenchang launch base, situated on Hainan Island in southern China. This would be the third flight of the kerosene-fueled Long March 8, considered one of a brand new era of Chinese rockets designed to exchange older Long March launcher designs burning poisonous propellant.
If all goes in accordance with plan, the Long March 8’s higher stage will deploy the Queqiao-2 spacecraft inside an hour of liftoff. Queqiao-2 will then unfurl photo voltaic panels and perform a collection of thruster firings to information itself into orbit across the Moon.
Queqiao-2 will maneuver right into a steady “frozen” orbit on the Moon, minimizing gas consumption over the course of its mission. The orientation of Queqiao-2’s elongated orbit will permit the spacecraft to loiter for hours over the touchdown websites Chinese officers have chosen for the nation’s subsequent collection of robotic Moon missions.
Two smaller satellites are additionally hitching a experience to the Moon on the Long March 8 rocket. One of those spacecraft is in regards to the measurement of a kitchen oven, the opposite roughly the scale of a small suitcase. Together, the Tiandu-1 and Tiandu-2 satellites will conduct inter-satellite ranging assessments to validate orbit dedication strategies. The outcomes from these assessments will inform Chinese engineers designing a constellation of information relay and navigation satellites that could possibly be in place in the subsequent decade, form of like a lunar GPS.
Far-side operations
Scheduled for launch on a heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket in May, Chang’e 6 would be the first Chinese lunar lander to depend on the brand new knowledge relay satellite tv for pc. Chang’e 6 will goal a touchdown on the Moon, accumulate samples, and return them to Earth, repeating the feat China achieved with the Chang’e 5 pattern return mission in 2020.
However, Chang’e 5 landed on the close to facet of the Moon, with direct line-of-sight communications again to Earth. China’s objective for Chang’e 6 is to collect the primary rocks from the far facet of the Moon and produce them again for detailed examination in labs on Earth. If profitable, Chang’e 6 would be the first pattern return mission from the lunar far facet, including a brand new class of specimens to humanity’s stock of Moon rocks.
In 2019, China achieved the primary tender touchdown on the far facet of the Moon with the Chang’e 4 mission, itself a near-duplicate of Chang’e 3, which landed on the close to facet of the Moon in 2013. China constructed the Chang’e 6 spacecraft as a backup for Chang’e 5.
When it landed in 2019, China’s Chang’e 4 mission used a earlier knowledge relay satellite tv for pc, Queqiao-1, which launched in May 2018. Weighing greater than 2,600 kilos (1.2 metric tons) absolutely fueled for launch, Queqiao-2 is a bigger spacecraft, greater than twice the mass of China’s first lunar communications relay station.