WENCHANG, China (AP) — Chinese technicians were making final preparations Monday for a mission to bring back material from the moon’s surface in what would be a major advance for the country’s space program.
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Chang’e 5 is China’s most ambitious lunar mission yet and marks the first time in four decades that any country has sought to bring rocks and debris from the moon to Earth. That could boost human understanding of the moon, its age and resources, and of the solar system more generally.
The four modules of the Chang’e 5 spacecraft are expected be sent into space Tuesday aboard a massive Long March-5 rocket from the Wenchang launch center along the coast of the southern island province of Hainan, according to a NASA description of the mission.
The secretive Chinese National Space Administration has only said that a launch is scheduled for late November.
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The mission’s key task is to drill 2 meters (almost 7 feet) beneath the moon’s surface and scoop up about 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of rocks and other debris to be brought back to Earth, according to NASA. That would the first opportunity scientists have had to study newly obtained lunar material since the American and Russian missions of the 1960s and 1970s.
Whatever happened to the US lunar mission before shutdown? China is about to ruffle some feathers with moon minning. With all that precious and viable minerals up there,the chinks are garnering to next super power.Get your Renmibis and Yuans in order .kudos to them,i bet next feat is man on moon
What will they be mining ? How viable is it to mine in space ? So, how many tonnes of minerals are they expected to bring back on each trip ?
For you to successfully mine in space, you need to build a complex mission in space, then have some huge space craft to be bringing minerals back to earth ?
Its an advancement,they will survey and bring back results. Silicon , iron mingi sana kwanza from meterorites,magnesium, calcium , aluminium , manganese and titanium. Among the more abundant are oxygen, iron and silicon. The oxygen content is estimated at 45% from the titanium.
With that in mind,after prospecting, a 250T payload is possible to shuttle back not forgetting a lunar base need to be built .The space station weighs 419.7T and it floats like feather…well gravity and sheet,but you get my point
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wah mpaka ni me google consumer continent[ATTACH=full]335694[/ATTACH] , these are the top results. africa we just sit back and consume halafu we cry no jobs, even food we import
nikama US walikuwa na fununu, next chinaman will form his own space force to protect their interests, hapo ndo vita itaanza na sabotage.
US must be number 1 in everything , china wakianza mining i highly doubt the US will just sit back and allow Chinese to take all the glory despite being their first.
watu walichekelea trump akiform space force but they’ll realize why soon.
let’s be pragmatic here, mind laying out how space mining will work ? offshore mining is exploited in the single digits because of the challenges it present, but we’re heading to space now .
Roughly 15-20years but knowing chinese and their Chang’e3 14 December 2013 soft landing and Chang’e4, on 3 January 2019 making the first landing on the far side of the moon in quick succession,i believe china will set up a lunar base if not a colony in ten years