Chang'e 5 sample return mission Options

[Thorsten Denk]

Possible Cháng'é 5 timeline (in UTC). From "Cosmic Penguin" on Twitter (scoll down a lot!).
https://twitter.com/Cosmic_Penguin/status/1...561964041388033

Launch: Mo Nov23 (today!) between 20:25 und 21:15
S/C sep: 30 Minutes later (already on the way to the Moon)
LOI: Sa Nov28 14:45
Landing: Su Nov29 20:30 (based on MCC screen shots during final rehearsal!)

No guarantee of course.

Thorsten

[Ron Hobbs]

From an article by Sam McNeil in the Washington Post:

The China National Space Administration said in a statement that the Long March-5Y rocket began fueling up on Monday evening, ahead of a launch scheduled for between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. Tuesday (2000 and 2100 GMT Monday, 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. EST Monday) at the Wenchang launch center on the southern island province of Hainan.

[Ron Hobbs]

CGTN is webcasting live coverage of the Chang'e 5 launch.

Go Chang'e 5!

[nprev]

Anybody have a link?

EDIT: Here.

[nprev]

Spacecraft sep. Looks like a sweet launch. Here's hoping for a great Sunday landing!

[Huguet]

Solar arrays deployed, the chinese are pretty confident on the mission, their biggest worry is a leak on the sample compartment.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/art...ack-earth-faces

"One of the Chinese space scientists’ biggest worries is that a tiny leak could cause the samples to burn and be lost in the atmosphere."

[fredk]

S&T reports landing planned for "on or around November 27th".

That would put it on the ground during the eclipse on the 30th. At its deepest, a little over 50% of the sun will be obscured from the target landing site. It would be cool to see before/during/after images of the landscape. At that obscuration I don't think there would be any noticable reddening of the illumination, though.

[Brian Swift]

Solar panel video from data captured and decoded by folks in amateur DSN twitter.
https://twitter.com/r2x0t/status/1331630305854197760?s=20

[Explorer1]

Nice work for them! This is like the Luna 9 surface images being intercepted and decoded at Jodrell Bank Observatory in 1966, and ending up in the British papers shortly after.
I wonder if they can do the same for the landing, ascent and docking, if those are not carried live by Chinese media.

[kenny]

Latest news from South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) , Nov. 26.

“ China’s…Chang’e-5 probe was “in good condition” on its way to retrieve lunar samples, the programme’s chief scientist said.

Chang’e-5 launched early on Tuesday morning and by Wednesday night had completed two orbital corrections during its 41-hour flight, having travelled 270,000km (167770.222 miles) from the Earth, Xinhua reported.

The programmed actions went as planned and all systems on Chang’e-5, as well as communications to the ground station, were in good condition, Xinhua said, showing positive signs for China’s third-phase of the lunar programme that aims to fetch 2kg (4.4 pounds) of moon rocks and return to Earth in the next three weeks.
If successful, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) will enter into the next phase – exploration focusing on the moon’s south pole and using future Chang’e missions to prepare for a research station. CNSA has previously said Chang’e-6 would retrieve a much larger sample from the lunar south pole, offering a 10kg load for international partners.

Wu said Chang’e-7 would analyse the landscape, material composition and environment of the south pole and Chang’e-8 would experiment with some “key technologies” on the moon. "

South China Morning Post - Chang'e 5 update

[Phil Stooke]

I think the '10 kg load for international partners' is an offer to carry up to 10 kg of instruments as international contributions to the payload. I don't know that the sample can be that much bigger. May be wrong...

Phil

[Huguet]

Or instead of making pounds -> kg (4.4lb -> 2kg) the reporter made kg -> pounds conversion (4.4 -> 9.68). One possible explanation.

[nogal]

Chang'e-5 has just successfully achieved an elliptic lunar orbit with a 17 minute burn which started at 12:58 UTC this Saturday.
Fernando

Source: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-11-28/China...NEha/index.html

[kenny]

The Xinhua news agency reports more precisely that the transit time from launch to lunar orbit insertion was 112 hours (4.67 days).

Xinhua agency - Chang'e LOI

[nogal]

From CNSA http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/n6758823/n6758838/c...24/content.html using Google translation:

At 20:23 on November 29, Beijing time, [Ed. 12:23 UTC] the Chang'e-5 probe "brakes" again at the near-moon point, changing from an elliptical orbit around the moon to a near-circular orbit around the moon.
　
Later, the Chang'e-5 probe will choose an opportunity to separate the lander and ascender combination from the orbiter and returner combination. The lander and ascender combination will carry out a soft landing on the lunar front, and work such as automatic lunar surface sampling will be carried out as planned.

Fernando