Experts’ views on Chinese space exploration

Editor’s Note: The space industry is a crucial part of China’s national strategy. In order to better serve the economy and society, China is integrating space science, technology and applications and upholding the principle of exploration and use of space for peaceful purposes. Three experts share their views on the issue with China Daily.

Moon missions exciting time for space

By Quentin Parker

The success after success of China’s space program, with all its diverse elements of scientific exploration and technological development in what remains a high-risk endeavor, is as impressive as it is exciting.

China launched three astronauts into low Earth orbit on Thursday evening for a six-month mission to the Tiangong space station, as part of preparations to send astronauts to the moon by the end of the decade. During a press conference on April 24, China Manned Space Agency stated that the development and construction of systems for a Chinese manned moon landing is proceeding according to plan, with the aim of achieving a moon landing by Chinese astronauts before 2030.

In particular, China’s achievements in space exploration and technology over the past five years are unprecedented. This includes the completion of China’s Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) space station, whose first major component, the Tianhe core module, was launched in April 2021 and the two main science modules, Wentian and Mengtian, were launched in 2022.

The Chinese space station continues its development and advancement program from its current T configuration, but has plans for further expansion. The docking time for “taikonauts” from launch to entry into the space station has recently been reduced from an already impressive six-seven hours to just two and a half hours due to the development of space rendezvous and docking technologies.

Tianzhou 7, the latest automatic cargo supply ship, took off from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island in January and docked in three hours, compared to the 16-19 hours it took the Elon Musk Space-X “Dragon” capsule to to dock with the International Space Station (and the six or so hours that the old Soyuz capsules took).

Also in May 2021 was the Tianwen 1 Mars mission with Zhurong Rover – perhaps the most complex and dangerous of China’s space missions. This must be seen in the context of the fact that approximately 60 percent of Mars missions fail to land on the Red Planet’s surface.

Also scheduled to launch and operate is China’s space station telescope, Xuntian, in 2025. Xuntian is an optical and ultraviolet space observatory with a 2-meter diameter lens, making it comparable to the venerable Hubble Space Telescope. Although the resolution of the Chinese telescope will be comparable to that of Hubble, the field of view will be 350 times larger.

More importantly, China’s Chang’e (Beautiful Moon Goddess) series of lunar missions has proven astonishingly successful, with the Chang’e 3 lander landing on the moon for the first time as early as December 2013. The mission included a lunar lander and a small lunar lander. Yutu (jade rabbit) rover that was dropped in the moon’s Mare Imbrium region, a prominent lava-filled basin from one of the largest impact craters known in the entire solar system and easily visible to the naked eye. It made China only the third country to achieve a soft landing on the moon.

Chang’e 4, a similar lander-rover mission, followed in 2019. It was designed as a backup in case Chang’e 3 failed. What made the mission special was that the landing zone was on the far side of the moon, which is not visible from Earth, the first such landing in the history of space exploration.

This achievement was made possible by the success of Chang’e 3, which gave mission planners and scientists the opportunity and confidence to reconfigure Chang’e 4 for the more challenging but interesting alternative on the other side. Since this made the mission much more complicated, to maintain essential communications with Earth, a separate queqiao (magpie bridge) relay satellite was deployed in a halo orbit around the so-called L2 Earth-moon Lagrangian point of gravitational equipotential for stability. This mission was also a great success.

The Chang’e 5, which followed, was China’s first lunar mission to return rock samples from the moon. It was launched in November 2020 and landed on the moon on December 1, 2020. Two weeks later, the return module returned with its precious cargo of 1.7 kilograms of moon rock. The scooping device attached to the lander was developed by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, while my own university, the University of Hong Kong, was fortunate enough to obtain a small sample of the moon rock for scientific research.

As a result, China became only the third country, after the United States and the former Soviet Union (now Russia), to return rock samples from the moon.

Just as Chang’e 4 was a backup for Chang’e 3, so was Chang’e 6 for Chang’e 5. Given the success of Chang’e 5, the Chang’e 6 mission has been redesigned to collect rock samples to collect the for the first time on the far side of the moon. This mission will be launched in the near future. If successful, it will be another scientific bonanza, as there are likely groundbreaking amounts of water ice in the moon’s shadowed craters that could be used as fuel for future space missions or for breathing by future space explorers.

However, international cooperation is crucial in space exploration. And I believe China is keen to deepen cooperation, as it made clear in its white paper on the space program published in January 2022. Indeed, many of the science payloads on the Chang’e landers have had international science packages. For example, Chang’e 4 had scientific packages from Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia.

And while the European Space Agency supported the Chang’e 5 mission by providing essential tracking at several crucial parts of the mission from both the Kourou Station in French Guiana and the Maspolomas Station in the Canary Islands, several scientific payloads provided by France, Italy and Sweden again, and a Pakistani ICUBE-Q CubeSat for Chang’e 6 to detect ice tracks on the lunar surface from orbit.

Chang’e’s series of missions isn’t over yet, as Chang’e 7 is planned for around 2026 and Chang’e 8 for around 2028, with both aiming for the moon’s south pole to establish a Chinese-led lunar base to build. in the 2030s.

Ahead of further international cooperation, this follows the recent unveiling of the most comprehensive lunar atlas ever created, which is crucial for guiding future lunar activities. This remarkable achievement is the result of more than a decade of painstaking work by Chinese lunar scientists and geologists. With this in mind, “watch this space” as humanity sets its sights on new ambitions of lunar exploration and envisions moon bases as a gateway to further frontiers.

The author is director of the Laboratory for Space Research at the University of Hong Kong. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.