WHEN it comes to space exploration, China has long taken third place. The cold war’s space race saw the US and the Soviet Union vying for firsts – satellite, human in orbit, landing on the moon – and left few records for China to claim.
That changed last year, when its uncrewed Chang’e 4 spacecraft made the first landing on the far side of the moon. Among other experiments, it contained a “lunar garden” of seedlings that went on to host the first plants (that we know of) to germinate on another world.
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The Chang’e missions, named after the Chinese goddess of the moon, have seen the country orbit, land and rove – all important, but fairly common. But Chang’e 5, launched this week, is attempting something that hasn’t been done in more than 40 years – bringing moon rocks back to Earth (see “China has launched its most advanced mission to the moon yet”).
The US claimed this “first” with the Apollo missions, in which astronauts collected samples directly from the lunar surface. The Soviet Union did it last, with a robotic sample return mission in 1976.
Yet China isn’t just playing for bronze now. Chang’e 5, an uncrewed, multi-part spacecraft capable of landing on and launching from the surface of the moon, is essentially a dress rehearsal for a crewed landing. After all, if you can bring rocks home safely, you are one step closer to making the same trip in person.
“Chang’e 5 is trying something that hasn’t been done in more than 40 years – bringing moon rocks back to Earth”
A Chinese crewed mission to the moon wouldn’t be a first, but it would bump the nation firmly into second place. While Russia is arguably the current leader in sending humans to low Earth orbit – the US only regained the ability to do so this year, thanks to SpaceX – few people take its claims of attempting a crewed lunar landing in the near future seriously.
China, meanwhile, has kept up a steady drumbeat of lunar missions, each more ambitious than the last, and there is no reason to believe it won’t continue to succeed. Chang’e 6 will see a second sample-return mission in 2023 or 2024, followed swiftly by Chang’e 7, which will involve five spacecraft, including a flying probe. Chang’e 8, pencilled in for 2027, will be the most ambitious yet, aiming to test a 3D-printer capable of building a structure out of the lunar soil. If that succeeds, things on the moon may begin to get very interesting indeed.
