Successful landing of Chang'e-6 on the far side of the moon
TapTechNews June 2nd news, at 6:23 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. According to CCTV News report, just now the China National Space Administration released the landing image of Chang'e-6 on the far side of the moon.
TapTechNews learned from the official website of the China National Space Administration that at 6:09 am on June 2nd, the Chang'e-6 lander and ascender assembly began to implement powered descent, and the 7,500-Newton variable-thrust main engine started. During this period, the assembly carried out rapid attitude adjustment and gradually approached the lunar surface. Thereafter, obstacle automatic 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 lunar surface. It hovered 100 feet (about 30 meters) above the safe point, and precise photography was carried out using a laser 3D scanner to detect lunar surface obstacles, and finally the landing point was selected and began to slowly and vertically descend. When the engine was shut down just before reaching the lunar surface, the buffer system was used to ensure that the assembly reached the lunar 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 implements the first human sampling return on the far side of the moon. The project has many innovations, high risks, and great difficulties. Compared with the Chang'e-5 mission that achieved sampling return on the front side of the moon in 2020, the Chang'e-6 mission has broken through the lunar retrograde orbit design and control technology, 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 will soon be started to work, and the Italian Laser Retroreflector has been deployed.
Since the Chang'e-6 detector was launched into orbit on May 3, 2024, it has successively experienced the processes of 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 30, the lander and ascender assembly and the orbiter and returner assembly achieved in-orbit separation. After the successful landing of the lander and ascender assembly, the lander will, under the control of the ground, carry out status checks and setting works such as the deployment of the solar wing and the directional antenna. Thereafter, the lunar far side sampling work that lasts about 2 days will officially start, and lunar soil samples and lunar surface rocks will be collected respectively through two methods of drill boring and robotic arm surface picking to achieve multi-point and diversified automatic sampling. At the same time, on-site investigation and analysis in the landing area on the far side of the moon will be carried out, and lunar soil structure analysis and other scientific explorations will be carried out to deepen the research on the origin and evolution history of the moon.