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China taking another giant step in its lunar mission

Shanghai Daily, January 12, 2015

• China's plan to land an unmanned spaceship on the moon before returning to Earth yesterday moved another step forward with a test craft shifting into lunar orbit for further tests.

  The service module of a lunar orbiter that flew back to Earth in November had been sitting in a position that brought it into sync with Earth's orbit, known as the second Lagrange point.

  It had separated from the orbiter in November.

  The craft, loaded with support systems for operating a spaceship, will collect further data to aid planning of the 2017 Chang'e-5 mission, China Central Television said.

  The service module successfully decelerated yesterday, allowing it to enter an 8-hour orbit, according to the Beijing Aerospace Control Center.

  Following instructions from the center, it braked around 3am and entered an elliptical moon orbit with a perilune (closest point) of about 200 kilometers and an apolune (furthest point) of about 5,300km.

  The module will make a second and third braking operation in the early hours of January 12 and 13 to enable it to enter the target 127-minute orbit for tests in preparation for the Chang'e-5 mission, said the center's chief engineer Zhou Jianliang.

  "The first braking is the most crucial," Zhou said. "Precise braking must be performed at perilune to prevent it from flying away from the moon."

  The lunar orbiter was launched on October 24.

  The service module was separated from the orbiter's return capsule on November 1, which returned to Earth after circling the moon during its eight-day mission.

  The service module reached the Earth-Moon second Lagrange Point in late November and left it on January 4.

  The orbiter is a test run for the final chapter of China's three step lunar program — orbiting, landing and returning.

  Chang'e-5 is being designed to make a soft landing on the moon and collect at least 2 kilograms of rock and soil samples before returning to Earth.

  If successful, that would make China only the third country after the United States and Russia to meet such a challenge.

  China's lunar exploration program has already launched a pair of orbiting lunar probes, and in 2013 landed a craft on the moon with a rover onboard. None of those was designed to return to Earth.

  China sent its first astronaut into space in 2003, the only other country after Russia and the US to achieve manned space travel independently. It has also launched a temporarily crewed space station.

  China's program has received Russian assistance, but has largely developed independently of America's, which is now in its sixth decade of putting people into space.

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