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SPACE STATION PLANS
China, which last year carried out the first landing on the far side of the moon and in July of this year launched a robotic probe to Mars, has other space goals in its sights. It aims to have a permanent manned space station in service around 2022.
“From next year, we will carry out the launch mission of our national space station,” said Qu Yiguang, deputy commander of the Long March-5 carrier rocket.
Asked when China was planning to put astronauts on the moon, Pei said any decision would be based on scientific needs, as well as technical and economic conditions, adding: “I think future lunar exploration activities should be carried out by a combination of man and machine.”
Matt Siegler, a research scientist at the Arizona-based Planetary Science Institute who is not part of Chang’e-5 mission, said the Mons Rumker volcanic area of the moon where the spacecraft is due to land is 1-2 billion years old.
“That is very young for the moon – most of our samples are 3.5 billion years old or more,” Siegler said in an email, noting that the area and other similar ones represented “late-stage volcanism” when the moon had enough internal heat for such activity.
“We want to find out what is special about these regions and why they remained warm longer than the rest of the moon,” Siegler added.
The United States, which currently has plans to return astronauts to the moon by 2024, landed 12 astronauts there in its Apollo program over six flights from 1969 to 1972, and brought back 382 kg (842 pounds) of rocks and soil.
The Soviet Union deployed three successful robotic lunar sample-return missions in the 1970s. The last, the Luna 24, retrieved about 170 grams (6 ounces) of samples in 1976 from a region called Mare Crisium. (Reporting by Martin Quin Pollard; additional reporting by Ryan Woo; Writing by Tom Daly; Editing by Will Dunham)
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2020-11-23 22:44:06Z
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