China’s Chang’e 6 mission has successfully delivered the first ever samples from the far side of the Moon to Earth. But what happened to the lander that collected lunar material?
Zhang 6 Launched On May 3. The mission consisted of four spacecraft: an orbiter, a lander, an ascent vehicle, and a re-entry capsule. Landing Landed in Apollo Crater On June 1, the main mission was to collect and drill unique samples from the far side of the Moon and load them into the ascender to be launched into lunar orbit.
The samples finally reached Earth on June 25. Landing As planned in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia.
Meanwhile, the Chang’e 6 lander is still in operation the moon. It was carrying other payloads, including a panoramic camera and a small rover. Information about the lander’s fate came recently from the French space agency CNES, which contributed a radon detection payload called DORN to the mission.
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“As planned, DORN was shut down shortly before Chang’e 6 took off from the lunar surface, when the ground platform became inactive,” the CNES press attaché said in an email.
The ascender explosion likely caused severe damage to the lander, although the latter was able to capture footage of the event. Accordingly, all activities – incl Autonomous deployment of the rover and imaging of the lander – It was concluded before take-off. This included another European instrument Which recorded charged particles that had not been discovered before On the moon.
If any activities were conducted after the ascension took off, they would cease when darkness fell over Apollo Crater. Unlike it is still running Chang E 3 And Changhe 4 On the near and far sides of the Moon, respectively, the Chang’e 6 lander did not carry the radioactive isotope heaters needed for long-term activities on the Moon, which would require surviving the extreme cold of the long lunar night. Night began at Apollo Crater on June 11, and the sun rose again over the site on June 26.
Meanwhile, the ascender, which carried samples from the Moon to the waiting Chang’e 6 spacecraft in lunar orbit, is also now out of commission. Although Chinese space authorities have not commented on the fate of the riser, it is likely that the rocket responsibly de-orbited the moon after docking with the orbiter and transporting samples.
Radio amateur Scott Tilley tracked signals from the ascender, and the absence of these signals indicated that it had been instructed to collide with the Moon.
Chang’e 6 mission quick update. The Ascender spacecraft did not appear today, indicating that it de-orbited and collided with the Moon as CE5 did according to the mission’s expected timeline. The orbiter was behaving normally and was in and out of lock with Argentina all day.June 8, 2024
China appears to have enacted the sampling protocol with its Chang’e 5 mission, which returned samples from the near side of the moon to Earth in late 2020.
With all other aspects completed, the re-entry capsule and the samples in it were transported to Beijing on Wednesday (June 26). The samples will soon be transferred to specially developed facilities for storage, analysis and distribution for research purposes.
Meanwhile, the Queqiao 2 satellite, which helped facilitate the far-side sample mission, will continue to orbit with its scientific payloads. It will support the ongoing and upcoming Chang’e 4 mission Chang 7 The mission, which will target the lunar south pole around 2026.
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