China's Chang'e-6 Successfully lands on the far side of the moon
TapTechNews June 2nd news. TapTechNews learned from the official website of the National Space Administration that at 6:31 am on June 2nd, the Chang'e-6 lander and ascender assembly successfully landed in the pre-selected landing area in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the moon with the support of the Queqiao-2 relay satellite.
At 6:09 am on June 2nd, the Chang'e-6 lander and ascender assembly began to implement powered descent, and the 7500-newton variable-thrust main engine was started. During this period, the assembly carried out rapid attitude adjustment and gradually approached the moon's surface. Thereafter, the automatic obstacle detection was carried out through the visual autonomous obstacle avoidance system, and the visible light camera was used to select the roughly safe point according to the light and dark of the moon's surface, hovering 100 meters (about 328 feet) above the safe point, and using laser three-dimensional scanning for accurate photography to detect obstacles on the moon's surface, and finally selected the landing point and started to slowly descend vertically. When it was about to reach the moon's surface, the engine was shut down, and the buffer system was used to ensure that the assembly reached the moon's surface in a free-fall manner and finally landed smoothly in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the moon.
The Chang'e-6 mission is implementing the first-ever human sampling return on the far side of the moon. The project has many innovations, high risks, and great difficulties. Compared to the Chang'e-5 mission that achieved sampling return on the near side of the moon in 2020, the Chang'e-6 mission has broken through the design and control technology of the retrograde orbit of the moon and will complete key technical nodes such as intelligent and rapid sampling on the far side of the moon and taking off and ascending on the far side of the moon with the support of the Queqiao-2 relay satellite.
The payloads carried by the Chang'e-6 lander will work as planned to carry out scientific exploration tasks. The international payloads of the Chang'e-6 mission, the ESA Lunar Surface Negative Ion Analyzer and the French Lunar Radon Detector, are about to start working, and the Italian Laser Retroreflector has been deployed.
Since the Chang'e-6 detector was launched into orbit on May 3rd, 2024, it has successively gone through processes such as earth-moon transfer, near-moon braking, circumlunar flight, and landing descent. The Chang'e-6 detector is composed of an orbiter, a returner, a lander, and an ascender. On May 30th, the lander and ascender assembly and the orbiter and returner assembly were separated on orbit. After the successful landing of the lander and ascender assembly, the lander will carry out status checks and settings such as the deployment of solar wings and directional antennas under the ground control through the Queqiao-2 relay satellite, and then officially start the approximately 2-day sampling work on the far side of the moon, and collect lunar soil samples and lunar surface rocks through two methods of drilling by drilling tools and surface fetching by a mechanical arm to achieve multi-point and diversified automatic sampling. At the same time, on-site investigation and analysis of the landing area on the far side of the moon, analysis of the structure of the lunar soil, and other scientific explorations will be carried out to deepen the research on the origin and evolution history of the moon.