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Chang'e 5 test vehicle "Xiaofei" lands successfully

Soon Chinese will dig raw earths (Helium-3) on the Moon, maybe future China will be as rich as today Saudi. :lol:
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China Space Explorer started from this ...
 
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congrats. great achievement. when did you people launch this mission? didnt read any such news.

It was launched a week ago, on October, 24rd. It is covered in Chinese news and some of the English outlets that deals with professional aero-space news. However, major medias such as CNN and BBC did not cover it.
 
It was launched a week ago, on October, 24rd. It is covered in Chinese news and some of the English outlets that deals with professional aero-space news. However, major medias such as CNN and BBC did not cover it.

ah ok i see. Never knew there was any such mission, since it wasnt reported in our media here. Anyway, seems to be a test for another upcoming mission? If so when is the real one planned?
 
Two space vehicles from the US (one government-funded and the other private-funded) end up being disasters while China has has more success? Hmm, it seems the US is now lagging behind China's space mission. I will not be surprised if China will be the first nation to send a man into Mars.
 
China's First Lunar Return Mission A Stunning Success
by Morris Jones
Sydney, Australia (SPX) Nov 01, 2014


The successful return of China's first circumlunar spacecraft has been somewhat downplayed by the media. Part of this is sadly due to the tragic loss of Space Ship Two and the death of a pilot that occurred just hours before this capsule landed.

Despite this, the mission should be celebrated for a number of achievements. China has now become the first Asian nation to recover a spacecraft from the Moon, and only the third nation in the world to do so. The mission has proven the successful design of a re-entry system designed for the fast velocity of a return from deep space. It has also demonstrated precise navigation and attitude control to place the re-entry capsule on the right trajectory.

The mission has also carried out China's first "skip" re-entry, where the capsule briefly skips out of the atmosphere before making its final plunge. This evens out the deceleration and heating imposed on the capsule.

The mission also puts China's robotic lunar exploration back on track, after the problems experienced by the Yutu Moon rover. China has now effectively demonstrated most of the critical systems and technologies it will need for the difficult robotic sample-return missions it plans for the future. It seems reasonable to expect that China will not experience much of a delay in carrying out the first flight, which should occur in or near 2017.

The landing of the capsule marks the end of the main goals of this mission, and that alone is enough to make the entire flight worthwhile. But the mission continues. The boxy spacecraft "bus" that carried the capsule to the Moon and back is still functioning.

It's in a highly elongated Earth orbit, awaiting further tasks. Exactly what China plans to do with it remains to be seen. The spacecraft could be used to explore the particles and fields environment of cislunar space, as the Earth's magnetic field gradually diminishes with distance.

It could also be sent to explore some of the Lagrangian points in the Earth-Moon system. These are five imaginary points in space where the gravitational points of these two worlds are in equilibrium, and some of them can serve as "anchor points" for orbiting spacecraft.

These areas have barely been explored by spacecraft, and they should be investigated further for any debris that could be lurking in these places. Alternatively, China could send the spacecraft on a series of tricky gravity-assist maneuvers to gain free energy from the Moon, changing its trajectory. Such moves could lead to more spacecraft making complex but fuel-efficient flights to the Moon in the future. This analyst does not believe that the spacecraft will be sent on any interplanetary trajectories.

The capsule was an experiment in its own right, but the capsule is also believed to have contained some rudimentary experiments. These were probably in the form of biological specimens, especially plant seeds.

These have been exposed to the high-radiation environment of deep space, which is far more dangerous than low Earth orbit. They were not in deep space for long, but the length of their exposure mimics the time interval that human astronauts will experience on lunar mission.

This leads to the biggest issue. The technology demonstrated on this mission clearly (if unofficially) brings China closer to achieving the goal of sending Chinese astronauts to the Moon. Again, it must be noted that the re-entry capsule used on this mission was a scale replica of the Shenzhou astronaut capsule.

This is hardly a coincidence! The first Chinese astronauts (or single astronaut) to fly to the Moon will probably fly a short and simple circumlunar mission, just like this spacecraft.

No orbit, no landing. But it will still be a flight to the Moon and back. China is developing powerful rockets that would be capable of sending a modified Shenzhou spacecraft directly to the Moon. It won't be long before the capability for such a mission will be in China's grasp.

Dr Morris Jones is an Australian space analyst who has written for spacedaily.com since 1999. Email morrisjonesNOSPAMhotmail.com. Replace NOSPAM with @ to send email. Dr Jones will answer media inquiries.
 
Two space vehicles from the US (one government-funded and the other private-funded) end up being disasters while China has has more success? Hmm, it seems the US is now lagging behind China's space mission. I will not be surprised if China will be the first nation to send a man into Mars.
what was neil armstrong?
 
Chang'e 5 Test Mission Updates - SPACEFLIGHT101
October 31, 2014

China successfully demonstrated its Chang'e 5 lunar Return Vehicle on Friday when the craft made a successful re-entry and an on-target landing in the Inner Mongolia region at 22:42 UTC, concluding an eight-day circumlunar flight to set up for Friday's entry demonstration. Official Chinese media confirmed that the landing was a success.

The Chang'e 5 Test Mission had the primary goal of testing a lunar Return Vehicle in an operational environment by demonstrating a complex skip re-entry at a velocity that will be encountered when returning from the Moon. The spacecraft consisted of a Service Module, based on a design flown on the Chang'e 1 and 2 lunar orbiter missions, and an operational Return Vehicle to be used for Chang'e 5 that will become China's first attempt to return samples from the Moon.

Setting out to complete an ambitious pathfinder mission for future robotic sample return missions to the Moon, the Chang'e 5 Test Vehicle launched atop a Long March 3C/E rocket back on Thursday, October 23.

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Photo: Xinhua

Entering a lunar free return trajectory, the spacecraft completed two course correction maneuvers during its four-day outbound leg to begin targeting the proper re-entry location for an on-target landing.
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93d45545f5b2da7c92eea050910f3e4e.jpgPhoto: CASC/CCTV

On Monday, the craft entered the Moon's gravitational sphere of influence and made its closest approach up to a distance of 12,000 Kilometers, collecting a series of images using cameras installed to monitor the deployment of the craft's solar arrays earlier in the mission. The stunning photos include shots of Earth, the lunar surface and both, Earth and Moon, in the same frame.

With its flyby complete, the Chang'e 5 Test Vehicle was inbound again - set for another four-day leg of its journey to get back to Earth at a precisely timed moment to begin its re-entry at the appropriate location. A set of up to three Trajectory Correction Maneuvers were available to the craft to fine-tune its course back to Earth, but only one of the maneuvers was needed.

All eyes were on the big screens at the Mission Control Center in Beijing when the craft reached a distance of 5,000 Kilometers to Earth. At 21:53 UTC, the Service Module and Return Vehicle parted ways, being separated after the Service Module provided power and command/telemetry relay to the smaller Return Vehicle throughout the flight around the Moon.

Following separation, the Return Vehicle was on a path taking it into Earth's atmosphere within about 19 minutes time. The Service Module on the other hand was planned to re-orient and fire its 490-Newton main engine three minutes after separation to alter its trajectory in a way that avoids re-entry to set the spacecraft up for a secondary mission within the Earth-Moon system. It was not confirmed whether the Service Module achieved this maneuver and details on the secondary mission of the vehicle were also not given.

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The Return Vehicle started its re-entry about 20 minutes after module separation, hitting the atmosphere with a speed of 11 Kilometers per second, a record for the Chinese. To reduce the peak temperature and heating rate on the Return Vehicle, an entry design was devised around the skip re-entry technique that was used with mixed success by the Russian Zond missions in the 60s & 70s and was also conceptualized for the Apollo missions that ended up using a modified entry scheme.

In the final minutes of its flight, the Chang'e return vehicle used its own hydrazine-powered attitude control thrusters to enter an orientation with its heat shield pointing forward and its center of gravity in a full lift-down position to ensure a good initial capture when entering the atmosphere. The vehicle performed an initial dip into Earth's dense atmosphere up to a point 60 Kilometers in altitude before conducting a pull-up maneuver to enter a path taking it out of the atmosphere again.

The exit conditions had to be controlled precisely to ensure the craft reached the proper sub-orbital velocity and flight path to be able to make its second re-entry at the planned location. Overall, the mission only had an entry corridor of 0.2 degrees.

Once out of the atmosphere, the craft could no longer use aerodynamic control, passively coasting up to an apogee altitude of 140 km. From there, the craft again dropped and entered the atmosphere at 22:22 UTC. Performing re-entry in two phases leads to a reduction in peak heating rate, thus reducing stress on the heat shield that had to dissipate a little over two times the energy seen during a re-entry from Low Earth Orbit.

The second re-entry saw the vehicle using its guidance system to modify its lift to target a landing site in the Inner Mongolia region. Around 22:32 UTC when passing ten Kilometers in altitude, the Return Vehicle deployed its parachute to slow down from subsonic velocity to a safe landing speed, also transitioning from horizontal to vertical flight.

The Chinese tracked the entire approach, entry and landing process starting with ground stations in Africa that monitored the initial dip into the atmosphere occurring just off the east coast of the Kenya/Somalia region. The Yuanwang 3 tracking ship took station in the Arabian Sea to monitor the initial entry and the exospheric skip before ground stations in Pakistan and China tracked the vehicle.

With the craft coming in right on its path, infrared cameras were used to monitor the vehicle's progress toward its landing site.
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Image: NASA

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Photo: CCTV via 9ifly.cn
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At 22:42 UTC, the Chang'e Return Vehicle touched down in the target location in Siziwang Banner of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Prior to landing, a 115 by 190-Kilometer box was identified in a navigational warning to be the primary landing site of the mission.

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Photo: Xinhua
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Following landing, recovery forces raced to the vehicle in helicopters and arrived within a few minutes, indicating that the landing was very close to the bulls-eye target.

Returning inside the capsule is precious cargo consisting of a variety of samples that made the journey from Earth to the Moon and back to allow scientists to study the effect of the deep space environment on organisms, seeds, plants and other samples. Opportunities of flying samples beyond Earth orbit have been extremely rare over the past decades and this mission offered a great opportunity to fly a sizable sample payload of several Kilograms.

The success of the Chang'e 5 Test Mission will pave the way for China's first lunar sample return mission as early as 2017 with a second mission following by 2020. These will be the first lunar sample return missions since 1976.

The sample return missions will be of a very complex nature featuring a spacecraft weighing eight metric tons and consisting of four modules.

The mission would include new technologies to realize a flight into orbit around the Moon, a propulsive landing on the lunar surface, the robotic acquisition of samples, a propulsive return to orbit of a sample-carrying ascent vehicle, a fully autonomous rendezvous in lunar orbit, the exchange of sample material between spacecraft modules and the successful return of the sample material.


Prior to flying the Chang'e 5 mission China is expected to launch the Chang'e 4 spacecraft which will be another lander and rover, following in the footsteps of Chang'e 3. It is likely that this mission would include more demonstrations of equipment to be used for lunar sample acquisition in an overall effort to reduce the risk of the lunar sample return mission which can be considered to be China's most ambitious robotic space mission.
 
再入返回飞行试验器服务舱转入拓展试验阶段
来源:中国军网作者:姚远责任编辑:牛晨斐2014-11-01 17:14

中国军网讯 (姚远)报道:记者从北京航天飞行控制中心获悉,在舱器分离10个小时后,运行在绕地大椭圆轨道上的再入返回飞行试验器服务舱转入长期管理阶段。

11月1日17时,北京航天飞行控制中心召开再入返回飞行试验任务测控通信指挥部与飞控组联席会,对服务舱的运行状态进行了全面分析评估,决策服务舱转入拓展试验阶段。从这一刻起,北京航天飞行控制中心飞管室开始对服务舱实施长达半年的拓展试验管理任务。

“为了圆满完成服务舱拓展试验任务,我们做了近半年的准备工作。”在飞管室长管机房,再入返回飞行试验任务服务舱拓展试验阶段主任设计师崔雁告诉记者,“从学习掌握任务技术状态到制定拓展试验飞控实时方案,再到团队岗位技能培训,我们都做了精心准备。”

服务舱拓展试验阶段副主任设计师刘俊琦介绍,服务舱拓展试验工作计划持续到明年四、五月份。期间,北京航天飞行控制中心将统一调度地面测控站,密切对服务舱进行监视分析,统筹安排各项拓展试验。
据了解,再入返回飞行试验器服务舱后续将飞赴地月L2点,在绕地月L2三圈后,还将飞往月球进行环月飞行,以验证嫦娥五号任务相关飞控技术。

According to Chinese web media report, the service module (or the boxy spacecraft "bus") that has carried the return/re-entry module around the moon and releasing it back into earth would be put to supplementary or extended mission. It would orbit the earth-moon L2(Lagrange 2) point for three times and then put into moon orbit, in order to test and verify navigation control technique related to the Chang'e 5 mission.

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ah ok i see. Never knew there was any such mission, since it wasnt reported in our media here. Anyway, seems to be a test for another upcoming mission? If so when is the real one planned?

The current test is called "Chang'e 5 test vehicle". As the name implies, the vehicle is a test run for the actually Chang'e 5 mission planned in 2017. The specific mission scope is not known yet, but all the preliminary information points to manned moon landing.
 

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