HONG KONG — China on Saturday became the third country to steer a
spacecraft onto the moon after its unmanned Chang’e-3 probe settled
onto the Bay of Rainbows, state-run television reported.
Cctv, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Chinese television broadcast images of the rover
after it landed on the moon. China is the third country to reach the
moon.
Wang Jianmin/XinHua, via Associated Press
The surface of the moon, in a photograph taken by
the camera of the lunar probe, Chang'e-3, displayed on the screen of
the Beijing Aerospace Control Center in China.
Peter Parks/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A model of China's first robotic lunar rover, the
Jade Rabbit, which will explore a plain on the moon. The Chang’e-3
mission is said to be the nation’s first “soft landing” on the moon,
which allows a craft to operate after descending.
China Daily, via Reuters
A rocket carrying the Chang’e-3 probe was launched
earlier this month from China’s Xichang Satellite Launch Center.
The United States and the Soviet Union are the other countries to have
accomplished so-called soft landings on the moon — in which a craft can
work after landing — and 37 years have passed since the last such
mission.
The successful arrival of the Chang’e-3 after a 13-day journey from Earth was reported on Chinese state television. Chinese news websites displayed what they said was a photograph
from the craft of the moon’s surface. At the time of the last soft
landing, by the Soviet Union in 1976, Mao Zedong lay a month from death
and China was in the twilight of his chaotic Cultural Revolution. Now
China, much richer and stronger, aspires to become a globally respected
power, and the government sees a major presence in space as a key to acquiring technological prowess, military strength and sheer status.
Chinese media celebrated the landing as a demonstration of the
country’s growing scientific stature. Television reports showed
engineers at the mission control center in Beijing crying, embracing
and taking pictures of one another on their cellphones.
“The dream of the Chinese people across thousands of years of landing
on the moon has finally been realized with Chang’e,” said the China
News Service, a state-run news agency. “By successfully joining the
international deep-space exploration club, we finally have the right to
share the resources on the moon with developed countries.”
The Chang’e-3 landing craft carried a solar-powered, robotic rover
called the Jade Rabbit, or Yutu in Mandarin Chinese, which was to
emerge several hours later to begin exploring Sinus Iridum, or the Bay
of Rainbows, a relatively smooth plain formed from solidified lava.
According to a Chinese legend, Chang’e is a moon goddess, accompanied
by a Jade Rabbit that can brew potions that offer immortality.
“It’s a very ambitious mission in the sense that it’s a rover with a
fair amount of instruments on it,” said Andrew Chaikin, a space
historian and an expert on lunar travel. The instruments include radar
to gather information about what lies as deep as 300 feet below the
surface, Chinese space scientists have said.
“There is the potential that some really interesting science could come out of this,” Mr. Chaikin said.
But the mission also embodies China’s broader ambitions in space, other
experts said. The Chang’e-3 mission is honing technology for future
missions while also emphasizing exploration. The landing craft appears
capable of carrying a payload more than a dozen times the weight of the
309-pound rover, Paul D. Spudis, a scientist at the Lunar and Planetary
Institute in Houston, said in an email.
“Although it will do some new science, its real value is to
flight-qualify a new and potentially powerful lunar surface payload
delivery system,” Dr. Spudis said.
A later Chang’e mission, sometime before 2020, is intended to bring
back rocks and other samples from the moon, and that will need a larger
craft capable of sending a vehicle back to Earth. That mission will
also need a more powerful launch rocket, which China is also
developing.
Within a decade, China could also become the only country with an
operating space station. The International Space Station, which has
been open to astronauts from 15 countries, is due to be decommissioned
by 2020, and China’s own, much smaller station could be ready to go up
about the same time, if preparations go smoothly. China is not among
the countries allowed to use the international station.
Despite its benign name, China’s Jade Rabbit rover could kindle
anxieties among some American politicians and policy makers that the
United States risks losing its pre-eminence in space in coming decades.
China’s opaque space bureaucracy is overseen by the military, and that
has magnified wariness. Legislation passed by Congress in 2011 bars
NASA from bilateral contacts with China, although multilateral contacts
are not proscribed.
In the past, some Chinese space engineers have also enthusiastically
endorsed eventually taking astronauts to the moon and back, which would
make China the second country, after the United States, to achieve that
feat. China sent its first astronaut into space in 2003.
A policy paper in 2011
said China would “conduct studies on the preliminary plan for a human
lunar landing,” but the government has not made any decision on a
manned mission, said Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor at the United
States Naval War College in Rhode Island who researches China’s space
activities.
“Certainly, they are putting all the building blocks in place so that
if they make that policy decision, they can move forward,” said
Professor Johnson-Freese. “But the Chinese are not risk-takers. They
are not going to approve that program until they are sure they are
capable of all those building blocks.”
Posted By Sameera Chathuranga
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation test link ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat contact me
Thank You
0 comments:
Post a Comment