China's Chang'e 5 probe lands Moon rocks in Inner Mongolia China has landed its Chang'e 5's probe and its precious payload of Moon rocks. The China National Space Agency reports that the re-entry capsule started the final leg of its journey at 01:00 local time, then hit the atmosphere at 11.2 km/sec at 01:33 am. That first approach resulted in a planned bounce, before a second …
Well done indeed China.
In addition to the success of the mission as a scientific endeavour, it will provide impetus to the rest of the world to keep up with or surpass China.
I am sure this has not been solely about collecting moon rocks either, as missions like this provide info for manned missions too. It wouldn't surprise me to wake up one morning to a rock collecting mission turning out to be Chinese astronauts playing golf on the regolith.
Do you know your history?
Keep up with China? The US and USSR went to the Moon 60 years ago. And because we're clearly in new territory here, the US put people on the Moon nearly 50 years ago. There's even a flag. They took video and photos. You should look them up.
The problem with the Moon is that there's nothing there that really requires revisiting, although the US is trying again.
And whilst China is reinventing the wheel, scientist from across the globe are collecting rocks from asteroids, and there is a huge difference in landing on a orbital object that you can see from your bedroom window, to an asteroid 10 times farther away.
Well done China!
...and well done El Reg for actually covering this story! (and in a positive way). Reading the rest of the western media, you'd be forgiven for not knowing this mission had even taken place. It seems the "new bogeyman" is only newsworthy if the news in question is painting China in a negative light.
I'd love to read more about this kind of technically pioneering mission —only the 3rd country ever to have returned material from the moon, and all done entirely remotely. But it looks like I'll either have to learn to read Chinese, or wait til NASA or Elon Musk do something similar, before I see the fawning western media pay any attention.
> El Reg did have a righteous dig
Yeah, that's bizarre, and not the first time Sharwood does that.
I'm no fan of China's human rights record but I do wish for a bit of consistency. I expect that next time a space vehicle is launched from the US, Mr Sharwood will not forget to add a word or two about Guantanamo or the CIA dungeons or the political assassinations.
Let's not for a moment forget that the entire US-Soviet Space Race was essentially backed up by either side for propaganda purposes. While there was legitimate science being performed, one only has to look at how quickly US interest for continuing the Apollo program waned in the early 1970s when it became clear that the Soviets were not going to get their infamous Moon rocket beyond LEO in one piece. As a result two entire Saturn V stacks along with two prospective crews were quietly scuttled into an early retirement and the remainder of the Apollo program along with plans for a Venus & Mars mission ditched.
What's delightful about China's space program is that its progress does not seem to be dependent on some adversary. Sure, they have done a lot of the stuff that others have done before, but one first has to walk the existing path before one can explore the unknown. At this point in time (with e.g. autonomous Lunar orbit docking), China is at most competing with itself.
But looking at the history of China since the early 1980s, this has been par for the course: to make leaps forward and achieve what others have not done before. When one looks for example at nuclear fusion research, their HL-2M fusion reactor is essentially doing what ITER will be doing in years from now (probably), and they have their subsequent (production level) reactor with lithium breeding and fully operational diverters for long-term operation already in planning for the 2030s.
Similarly with radio-astronomy, where China will soon hold the world records for the world's largest fixed radio telescope (FAST) as well as the largest steerable radio telescope at well beyond 100 m diameter.
Call it propaganda, call it national pride, call it something else. Fact of the matter is that China does what others do not. And that can be delightful or terrifying, depending on what your stake in the game is.
Too often reporting on China degenerates into politics but their space program is, and should be recognized as, true science achievements.
China is also far more open to cooperation with NASA than NASA is with China. Despite being shut off from the ISS, they are still designing their space station modules to be compatible with ISS docking.
And while they may not be as open as some might like, they have taken steps in the right direction. Most recently they opened the FAST telescope to the international community after the demise of Aricebo.
The numbers of scientific papers that come out of China on topics such as fusion research for example is beginning to dwarf the number from other nations. Even as a partner in the ITER project, it seems clear that the Chinese are not interested in letting the politics play out first before pouring the first concrete. Here Chinese scientists have a big advantage in that a budget and building site for a new project can be determined before many other nations manage to figure out the first part. The years that it took for ITER's building site to be determined was an embarrassment, in my humble opinion.
There is also a lot of cooperation between Chinese and other nations' universities on a wide variety of topics, and as you mentioned they are opening more and more of their scientific facilities to foreigners.
Makes the idea of a new International Chinese Space Station not seem so weird. At the very least it'd be cool to have two ISSes around instead of just the one :)
I'm not a big fan of politics in general, but I can appreciate solid science and a willingness to share findings for what could alter the course of humanity.
"Here Chinese scientists have a big advantage in that a budget and building site for a new project can be determined before many other nations manage to figure out the first part. The years that it took for ITER's building site to be determined was an embarrassment, in my humble opinion."
It certainly helps when you have an authoritarian government that, if on board with the project, can just say "Yes. Build it there. Here's the money" as opposed to many other countries where not only does the location have to be agreed between international partners, but it has to be somewhere which doesn't affect the locals, or the locals need to be properly compensated and given time to move. Then there's the many court cases brought by the various protesters (you can't just shoot them in most countries!) Living in a democracy with restrictions on Government is allowed to do by dictat has its downside too.
PS, I upvoted you for the general thrust of your post, I agree with you :-)
> as opposed to many other countries where not only does the location have to be agreed between international partners, but it has to be somewhere which doesn't affect the locals, or the locals need to be properly compensated and given time to move where the local parliamentary and governmental representatives can get the most favour with their corporate sponsors at the expense of other sectors of the population.
Call me a cynic.
"Despite being shut off from the ISS, they are still designing their space station modules to be compatible with ISS docking."
That might be pragmatism. If there's any future co-operation or even an emergency, there are a number of craft capable of using that docking system from a number of sources. Not to mention that they were probably given the relevant plans, details, methods etc, by NASA because a universal docking system makes way more sense than propriety ones. And it's cheaper and faster then inventing your own.
What's delightful about China's space program is that its progress does not seem to be dependent on some adversary.
I doubt that. China's goal seems clearly to become the "first one" in the space race (too), that's why they choose the "do it alone" way rather than international cooperation. It's China vs anybody else.
@ Elledan. "Let's not for a moment forget that the entire US-Soviet Space Race was essentially backed up by either side for propaganda purposes."
I don't think that is the entire reason. Firstly, JFK's speech about landing Americans on the Moon and returning them safely to Earth was instrumental in getting the American public to actually approve a tax increase to pay for the NASA space programme. Secondly it was inordinately expensive, the Soviets, having a public mission to beat or at least equal the Americans had to spend vast amounts of money on a space programme they could hardly afford. Indeed in the USA there was considerable antagonism to the Apollo programme from black groups who wanted the money spent on improving the environment for poor neighbourhoods, see the poem 'Whitey on the Moon' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4 . Thirdly, both the USA and the Soviets learned a great deal about how to 'improve' their nuclear ICBM technology from their 'civilian' space programmes.
Obviously. They are still sixty-fifty years late, and without much pressure can move slowly, taking advantage of fifty years of improvements and knowledge made by others. Autonomous docking is easier now with actual sensors and computer power than it was sixty years ago, when you had to discover if docking was viable at all.
Others are getting samples from asteroids because that's actually more interesting than lunar soil, but less useful for national pride or propaganda - which actually are the same thing. Frankly, I found New Horizons first images of Pluto and other remote objects far more interesting. Of those great data from Mercury. Let's see when we will have the first samples from Mars.
Having the largest instruments is useless if they don't do real science and let scientists access them and the results. The Russian 6m telescope made a very tiny fraction of the work the Palomar 200" did, and even Mount Wilson 100".
But it useful to assert "mine is bigger than yours".... which is what propaganda is.
Interest waned, not because the Soviets stopped their program but because they really couldn't justify sending many more men to the Moon because there wasn't much to do once you get there. 12 men have stepped on the Moon so far. It was an expensive endeavor that was becoming difficult to justify. The same research could be done by just going into Earth's orbit, you didn't need to go to a dull grey park 250,000 miles away to do the same research.
Plans to get to another planet were scrapped because of increasing research into the radiation effects and how no one had any idea to overcome that, short of sending soon to be corpses. Sending men on a one way mission is easy to do, we could do it today, but it serves no purpose right now as there isn't anything exactly pressing to handle on Mars. Sure we will one day, when we can figure out a way to make it sustainable.
China's adversary is the rest of the world and for the most part the US, because simple minded people think this is an achievement.
But yay China for getting to the Moon 60 years after the USSR and US.
Well done China.
In my opinion though, it's a real shame that El Reg couldn't have reported this success without the misplaced dig in the last paragraph.
After all, they don't end articles on US space efforts with 'Which is all very well for those US kids that can actually afford to go to a reasonable University In a land where if you don't have the money you don't get anywhere'.
I'm glad that China is climbing the (steep) ladder of rocket science achievements. When the asteroid comes, we'll need all the countries we can get to participate in deflecting it.
That said, do we really need to collect more moon rocks ? What more can we learn from this new batch ?
The new batch of rocks is from deeper under the surface than other samples brought back. The surface of the Moon is turned over by micro-meteorites, such as the recent Geminids, and some larger bits of space rocks when they impact the surface. It is also churned by the solar wind. The rocks brought back this week should be from a layer deep enough to to have been affected by solar wind or micro-meteorites in the 'geological' recent past.
>What more can we learn from this new batch ?
Just because we know the moon is made of cheese does not mean it is the same cheese everywhere. If you hope to establish a manned presence on the moon it is essential to know what resources are available at your planned site. After all we may be able to survive on cheddar but what if it is Limburger.
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