The Chinese lunar probe Chang’e-5 has left the mother ship and is preparing to land on the moon to collect samples of lunar soil and then return to Earth. This was announced by the Chinese Space Agency (CNSA) indicating that at 4.40 on Monday (21.40 on Sunday Italian time), the landing module separated from the orbiting module at about 200 kilometers above the surface of the Moon. .
Allunaggio
Launched on November 24, Chang’e-5 is the first mission since August 1976 (the Soviet probe Luna 24) that will bring back rock samples from the Moon to our planet. The landing module will progressively lower its orbit to approximately 15 km in anticipation of the moon landing window on Mount Rmker, a 1.2 billion-year-old volcanic formation in the Ocean of Storms region (where Apollo 12 also landed on November 19, 1969), between Tuesday and Wednesday.
The collection of samples
Chang’e-5 will collect more than 2 kilos of artifacts by digging with a robotic arm at a depth of 2 meters. The expected return towards the middle of December in a desert place in the province of Inner Mongolia. China plans to land on the Moon in 2030 with a human mission, meanwhile the Chang’e-4 rover, the first to land on the lunar side not visible from Earth, has been operating normally for about a year.
November 30, 2020 (change November 30, 2020 | 18:39)
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