China’s Chang’e 6 mission has successfully sent back to Earth the first samples from the far side of the Moon. But what happened to the tolerator that collected the lunar material?
Change 6 GOING on May 3. The mission consisted of four spacecraft – an orbiter, lander, ascent vehicle and reentry capsule. earth fell into the crater of Apollo on June 1, with the primary task of collecting and drilling for unique samples from the lunar far side and loading them into the ascender for launch into lunar orbit.
The samples finally reached Earth on June 25, touching down as planned in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia.
Meanwhile, the Chang’e 6 lander remains powered up MONDAY. It carried other payloads, including a panoramic imager and a small rover. Insights into Earth’s fate came recently from the French space agency CNES, which contributed to the mission with a radon emission detection payload called DORN.
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“As planned, DORN was turned off shortly before Chang’e 6 lifted off from the lunar surface, when the ground platform became inactive,” a CNES press attaché said in an email.
The explosion of the ascender likely caused extensive damage to the lander, although the latter managed to capture footage of the event. Therefore, all activities – including autonomous rover deployment and ground imaging — were wrapped before takeoff. This included another European instrument that recorded previously undetected charged particles on the surface of the moon.
If there were any activities after the rise of the sticker, they would have rested until evening over the crater of Apollo. Unlike the still functional one Change 3 AND Change 4 landers on the lunar near and far sides, respectively, the Chang’e 6 lander did not carry the radioisotope heaters necessary for long-term activities on the Moon, which requires surviving the deep cold of the long lunar night. Night at Apollo Crater began on June 11, and the sun rose again over the site on June 26.
Meanwhile, the ascender, which carried samples from the moon to the Chang’e 6 spacecraft in lunar orbit, is also now out of action. Although China’s space authorities have not commented on the fate of the adhesive, the rocket is likely to have been dutifully deorbited to the moon after docking with the orbiter and transferring the samples.
Radio amateur Scott Tilley tracked signals from the booster, their absence suggesting it had been directed to hit the moon.
Quick update on the Chang’e 6 mission. The Ascender did not appear today, indicating that it has deorbited and impacted the Moon as CE5 did after the expected mission timeline. Orbiter is behaving normally and has been in and out of lock with Argentina all day today.June 8, 2024
China appears to have adopted the sample protocol with its Chang’e 5 mission, which returned samples from the near side of the moon to Earth in late 2020.
With all other aspects completed, the re-entry capsule and the samples inside were flown to Beijing on Wednesday (June 26). The samples will soon be transferred to specially developed facilities for storage, analysis and distribution for research.
Meanwhile, the lunar relay satellite Queqiao 2, which helped facilitate the far side sample mission, will continue to orbit with its science payloads. It will support the ongoing Chang’e 4 mission and the next mission Change 7 mission, which will target the lunar south pole around 2026.