BEIJING: China, which successfully launched its first ever mission to land an unmanned spacecraft on the Moon, has expressed interest in space cooperation with India which has sent its first interplanetary mission to Mars.
The probe Chang’e-3 was launched into orbit last night aboard an enhanced 56.4 meter high Long March-3B carrier rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre.
The launch came a day after India’s Mars orbiter Mangalyaan left the Earth for a 300-day journey to the Red Planet.
Chinese space scientists are looking forward to cooperation with other countries, including the country’s close neighbor India, state-run Xinhua news agency said in a report on the successful launch of China’s lunar probe.
Li Benzheng, deputy commander-in-chief of China’s lunar program, told media earlier that China’s space exploration does not aim at competition.
“We are open in our lunar program and cooperation from other countries is welcome. We hope to explore and use space for more resources to promote human development,” the Xinhua report quoted him as saying.
The Chang’e-3 lunar probe is expected to land on the moon in mid-December to become China’s first spacecraft to soft land on the surface of an extraterrestrial body.
The probe’s carrier, an enhanced Long March-3B rocket, put the probe in the designated orbit in a text book launch from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China.
The probe, which is carrying a robotic rover to explore the moon besides a telescope, entered the earth-moon transfer orbit as scheduled, with a perigee of 200 kilometers and apogee of 380,000 kms, officials said.
“The probe has already entered the designated orbit,” said Zhang Zhenzhong, director of the launch center in Xichang.
“I now announce the launch was successful,” he said amid cheers from the staff.
“We will strive for our space dream as part of the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation,” he said.
The probe’s soft-landing is the most difficult task during the mission, said Wu Weiren, the lunar program’s chief designer.
“This will be a breakthrough for China to realize zero-distance observation and survey on the moon.”
More than 80 per cent of technologies and products of the Chinese mission are newly developed, state-run Xinhua news agency quoted Zhang as saying.
The Chang’e-3 will lay a foundation for manned lunar orbit mission and manned lunar landing. China has not revealed the roadmap for its manned mission to land on the moon.
So far, only the United States and the former Soviet Union have soft landed on the moon, while India’s Chandryan-1, which discovered water on Moon crashed on its surface.
Chang’e-3, comprising a lander and a moon rover called “Yutu” (Jade Rabbit), presents a modern scientific version of an ancient Chinese myth that a lady called Chang’e, after swallowing magic pills, took her pet “Yutu” to fly toward the moon, where she became a goddess, and has been living there with the white rabbit ever since.
Tasks for the lunar rover include surveying the moon’s geological structure and surface substances, while looking for natural resources.
A telescope will be set up on the moon, for the first time in human history, to observe the plasmasphere over the Earth and survey the moon surface through radar.
The lunar probe mission is of great scientific and economic significance, said Sun Zezhou, chief designer of the lunar probe.
The mission has contributed to the development of a number of space technologies and some of them can be applied in civilian sector, he said.
Chang’e-3 is part of the second phase of China’s lunar program, which includes orbiting, landing and returning to the Earth. It follows the success of the Chang’e-1 and Chang’e-2 missions in 2007 and 2010.
After orbiting for 494 days and intentionally crashing onto the lunar surface, Chang’e-1 sent back 1.37 terabytes of data, producing China’s first complete moon picture.
Launched on October 1, 2010, Chang’e-2 verified some crucial technologies for Chang’e-3 and reconnoitered the landing area. It also made the world’s first lunar holographic image with a resolution of 7 meters.
Currently, Chang’e-2 is more than 60 million km away from the Earth and has become China’s first man-made asteroid. It is heading for deep space and is expected to travel as far as 300 million km from the Earth, the longest voyage of any Chinese spacecraft.
China is likely to realize the third step of its lunar program in 2017, which is to land a lunar probe on moon, release a moon rover and return the probe to the Earth.
The moon is considered the first step to explore a further extraterrestrial body such as the Mars.
If successful, the Chang’e-3 mission will mean China has the ability of in-situ exploration on an extraterrestrial body, said Sun Huixian, deputy engineer-in-chief in charge of the second phase of China’s lunar program.
“China’s space exploration will not stop at the moon,” he said. “Our target is deep space.”
China sent its first astronaut into space in 2003, becoming the third country after Russia and the United States to achieve independent manned space travel. -PTI
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