 |
|
|
The Race for Man On the Moon Is On Again
China’s Chang’e-1 lunar mission reached an end on Sunday, after completing its mission successfully. The Chinese news agency Xinhua reported that the spacecraft crashed into the lunar surface, following a controlled maneuver, at 4:13 p.m. Sunday Beijing time, after 16 months of mission.
Ouyang Zhiyuan, chief scientist of China Lunar Exploration Project, told Xinhua:
We set four major goals for this orbiting program. Through all of our scientists’ work, I think these goals were completed well. Some of the tasks were more than fulfilled.
The Chang’e-1 lunar orbiter project was initiated in 2004, but it wasn’t until October 2007 that it was launched. The mission was just the first step of a three-phase mission, which will continue with the launch of a second lunar probe in one or two years’ time.
Chang’e-1 has returned valuable data on Earth, and its mission will help Chinese scientists in their The Chang’e-2 mission, which will also be a test mission, aiming at achieving soft landing. This will be a forerunner for China’s 2017 mission, when a rover is set to land on the moon and return mineral probes.
All of this is ultimately aiming at providing China with enough data to fulfill its goal of landing a manned mission on the moon before 2020. This statement obviously shows commitment, and suggests that the race for the Moon is once again on.
The Obama administration has recently announced additional funding for NASA, as well as plans to return a manned-mission on the Moon by 2020, as part of the human and robotic space exploration program.
© 2007 - 2009 - eFluxMedia
