To achieve a manned landing on the moon before 2030, mainland researchers are developing a series of new equipment such as new rockets, new spacecraft, and new manned lunar rovers. What tasks and capabilities do these new equipment undertake, and what is the program process for future manned lunar landings? Let's find out together.
The new generation of manned launch vehicles for manned lunar landings is named Long March 10, responsible for sending lunar landers and lunar spacecraft into Earth-Moon transfer orbit, with a height of about 92 meters, a takeoff mass of about 2187 tons, and a takeoff thrust of about 2678 tons, which is expected to have the conditions for its first flight in 2027.
Former chief designer of the Long March 2F carrier rocket of the First Academy of Aerospace Science and Technology Group Easy: At present, various research and development work is in the process of orderly and rapid progress, with a core stage diameter of 5 meters, and a booster with a diameter of 5 meters is bundled. Therefore, its future lunar orbit carrying capacity is 27 tons, which is more than 3 times higher than the Long March 5.
A new generation of manned spacecraft: a fully upgraded new space-to-earth round-trip transport vehicle
The new generation of manned spacecraft is a new type of space-earth round-trip transport vehicle comprehensively upgraded and developed on the basis of Shenzhou spacecraft, which adopts modular design and consists of return module and service module. After reaching the moon, astronauts will be delivered to the lunar surface by a lunar lander.
Lunar lander: can carry two astronauts to and from
The lunar lander is a newly developed manned descent and ascent vehicle for extraterrestrial objects on the mainland, consisting of a lunar landing module and a propulsion module. It is mainly used for astronaut transportation between orbit around the moon and the lunar surface, can carry 2 astronauts to and fro, and can carry lunar rovers and scientific payloads.
Manned lunar rover: Two astronauts can take the lunar rover to conduct lunar sampling
After the lunar lander reaches the lunar surface, astronauts will ride on the lunar rover and work on the lunar surface. The manned lunar rover weighs about 200 kilograms and can carry two astronauts, who will carry out lunar sampling within a 10-kilometer radius of the lunar rover.
Preliminary plan for manned lunar landing: two launches Two spacecraft rendezvous and dock in orbit around the moon
At present, the preliminary plan for the mainland manned lunar landing is: first launch a lunar lander, which is moored and waiting in a circumlunar orbit, and then launch a new generation of manned spacecraft, and the spacecraft and lander rendezvous and dock in circumlunar orbit. Astronauts enter the lander from the spacecraft.
Preliminary plan for manned lunar landing: astronauts enter the lunar lander to land on the moon to carry out lunar activities
After the lander separates from the spacecraft, it descends to the lunar surface, and the astronauts carry out lunar surface activities. After that, the astronauts took off and ascended on the lander to dock with the spacecraft, and the astronauts entered the spacecraft. After separating from the lander's lunar module, the spacecraft returned to Earth.
Asia's largest single-aperture antenna
Receive the moon "whisper"
The moon is 380,000 kilometers away from us, which is about the length of the circumference of nine and a half Earth's equator, and the signal obtained by Jade Rabbit 2 from the moon will attenuate as the distance becomes larger as it travels back to Earth.
To capture these precious and weak signals, the team used one of Asia's largest antennas. This antenna is not a wire, but a "cauldron".
How do you receive data from the moon on Earth? It relies on this "pot"-like device, which is called a 70-meter caliber fully movable antenna. Although it looks like a pot, this configuration helps it collect data better.
Xue Xiping, engineer of the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences: The location we are now is the Wuqing Ground Station of the National Astronomical Observatory, which (antenna) is 360 degrees movable in azimuth and can rotate at 90 degrees, which means that as long as it is a target on the horizon up, we can observe it. The images, videos, and many other scientific data received by the moon will use this antenna.
This "pot" is so powerful, what does it look like in that "pot"? Today we will go to the "pot" together and take a look.
The 70-meter aperture antenna has an area equivalent to 10 basketball courts
Inside this 70-meter aperture antenna, the first feeling is that it is very large. The reflective panel used in the antenna, its area is 4560 square meters, equivalent to the size of 10 basketball courts, the height of the antenna is 72 meters, the weight is 2700 tons, mainly responsible for lunar exploration, fire detection and other deep space exploration tasks data reception.
Xue Xiping, engineer of the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences: Our antenna adopts a way of combining the main reflection and the secondary reflection, and now the main reflective surface is called the foot on the foot, and the disk above the head is called the secondary reflective surface. The signal coming down from the satellite first shoots to the main reflective surface, then converges to the secondary reflective surface, and then the secondary reverse side is reflected to the feed, and then enters our transmission equipment, which is a secondary reflection.
Why use several reflections to collect this data?
Secondary reflection is mainly to improve the reception efficiency, and another advantage is that the feed can be made below this equipment, if it is a reflection, this pile of equipment I have to hang in the sky, so that the burden is heavier, and the design is more difficult.
What does a feed look like?
Xue Xiping, engineer of the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences: We are now in the feed cabin of the antenna, the cone is called the feed horn, and then the signal enters the refrigeration receiver. In order to improve the receiving sensitivity of the antenna, it is filled with nitrogen, and the temperature is only minus 265 degrees Celsius, reducing the noise interference generated by our antenna equipment itself. These cables are then passed to the lower machine room.
Distant data has been received, and it is time to turn it into understandable information. Next to the antenna is the data processing studio.
Xue Xiping, engineer of the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences: This is used to make signal judgment, and the raised place is where the signal is. The entire workflow is fully automated, and the antenna controls each device according to its own time node to achieve its normal working state.
Data received from the Moon
How do I turn into a lunar photo?
The signal reception from 380,000 kilometers away has been successful, but this is only one of the links, and the next step is to decode the data we can't understand into understandable lunar photos. How does data become a photo? Let's go to the National Observatory, which processes lunar science data, to find out.
The image was taken during the 59th month of the Jade Rabbit 2 rover's work on the far side of the moon, one of scientists' favorite lunar landforms, which can also excavate material deep in the moon. As can be seen from the photos, if there are granular raised stones near the edge of the crater, it means that the crater has not been fully weathered, the year of formation is relatively new, and the lunar rover can analyze the fresh rock composition to obtain scientific data of interest to scientists. Although the photos look very clear and intuitive, the initial state that these photos receive is a string of numbers.
Wuqing station received from the "cauldron" is full of numbers?
Fu Qiang, chief designer of the ground application system of the Chang'e-4 mission: In this way, we extract the data of each payload from this data stream, and then form scientific data, and after we further process it, we will form various types of image data and various types of detection data. It does not necessarily reflect its color truthfully, and we want to make a series of color corrections on this image during processing.
This is a certain amount of work, and now Chang'e-4 has been going smoothly from the project, and we can get a lot of images, so we have to face these new data every day.
This picture is very clear in detail, but in fact, this picture is only more than 300 megabytes in size, which is slightly insufficient resolution compared to the photos taken by our current mobile phones, but to process such a picture from the moon 380,000 kilometers away, it is still very complicated.
Fu Qiang, chief designer of the ground application system of the Chang'e-4 mission: When we were in orbit exploration, the Yutu-2 rover took two circles in the same position and obtained a total of 56 images. After we stitched it together, we formed such an image with a data size of more than 300 megabytes, but in fact, when this data was transmitted down, it took nearly a day to two days to get it to the ground.
We are now working until the day of 59 months, and under normal circumstances, our full-color (black and white) image is enough to complete flight control work such as moving and detecting targets. The cost of color map implementation in orbit will be a little greater, and when we go to some more critical positions, we will use color map ring shooting.
Will the new Magpie Bridge be more convenient in the future?
Fu Qiang, chief designer of the ground application system of Chang'e-4 mission: Our Queqiao No. 2 is more of an extra road, and for us, another road is more reliable. The lunar terrain is relatively complex, and we need images to plan its movement route.
The second is that we want to select some scientific detection targets that we are interested in on this image, and then control our car to move near our target, carry out a series of scientific exploration on these targets, and discover more scientific results.
The magical lunar soil is actually "colorful"
In addition to getting photos sent back from the moon, in 2020, the lunar exploration project retrieved 1731 grams of lunar samples from the moon through the Chang'e-5 mission. Some universities and scientific research institutions have applied for lunar soil for scientific research, and lunar soil applications are basically measured in grams, sometimes even milligrams. Through nearly 3 years of research, a number of scientific research results have been achieved, and more mysteries of the moon have been unveiled. What does the lunar soil that makes scientists think about it look like, and what is it studying when studying the lunar soil?
The lunar soil sample retrieved by Chang'e-5 from the lunar surface is black cinder-like particles on the surface, but when it is put under a microscope, it will become colorful and colorful.
Zhou Qin, chief designer of Chang'e Engineering Ground Application System: Lunar soil refers to some small rock or mineral particles with particularly fine particle size. This grain we can see that it is composed of different minerals, like this brown, we generally think of it as pyroxene, this color is slightly darker, like metallic luster this is ilmenite, slightly lighter in color, may be feldspar, like brownish yellow is generally olivine.
Because more than 90% of the samples returned by Chang'e-5 are composed of local basalt, we see that the rock type or mineral composition in this is relatively single.
Is this basalt present on Earth?
There is also basalt on Earth, but it is not the same composition as its composition. The natural environment of the Earth and the Moon is different, because there is no oxygen on the lunar surface, and the redox state is not the same, but if we look at the structure of the rock, there is a certain similarity.
Are these collectively referred to as glass on Earth?
In fact, the glass content in this is also quite high, and there are many kinds of glass, one is volcanic glass, and there is impact glass. If it is impacted, an external force hits the surface of the moon, and if the heat provided is enough, the molten slurry thrown out by the melting rock is called hitting the glass. Because the lunar surface is a vacuum, the degree of volcanic eruption will be more violent than on our earth, and after the magma is thrown into the air, it is equivalent to a rapid quenching and condensation process, which is called volcanic glass, which reflects the information of the deep part of the lunar mantle.
What resources does the Moon have that we can use?
Our study of lunar samples is definitely to study the evolutionary history of the moon itself, and it is also conducive to our better understanding of what kind of resources are still in the moon, what minerals or which elements can be used for resource exploitation or resource exploitation.
So far, researchers have discovered the continent's first new lunar mineral, Chang'e, through mineralogical research on hundreds of thousands of lunar soil particles with an average size of only 10 microns.
Walk! Go to the mysterious "vault" to find the lunar soil
The soil retrieved from the moon can help us better understand the moon, the degree of preciousness is self-evident, in order to preserve these precious soil, in the National Astronomical Observatory, there is a mysterious, comparable to the "treasury" laboratory, Chang'e-5 retrieved lunar soil is preserved here. The preservation of lunar soil is different from general experimental samples, and environmental requirements such as classification, numbering, and air pressure are very strict.
Lunar Sample Laboratory Classification and keeping fine numbering
In the National Astronomical Observatory's underground lunar sample laboratory, researchers are sorting and preserving samples retrieved from the moon by Chang'e-5.
When Chang'e-5 took samples from the moon, it used two methods. One is shoveling, shoveling the surface lunar soil into the device. The other is drilling, where a drill bit is used to take a sample of the deep part of the lunar soil.
For example, CE5C represents Chang'e No. 5, and C means shoveling.
Below we can see that there are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, followed by 7, 8, 9, 10, a total of 11 samples drilled at that time.
Zhou Qin, chief designer of Chang'e Engineering Ground Application System: It's all divided, you see we have 10 below, and the bottle above is also 10, and each can is a 10-gram sample.
The environment should imitate the lunar surface, which is anhydrous and hypoxic, which is filled with high-purity nitrogen. You see that this glove is exposed, and the pressure of nitrogen inside it is slightly higher than the pressure outside, which is actually to prevent air from entering. The main thing is to make it last longer in a better environment, so that when subsequent scientists do scientific experiments, they will not cause pollution of samples due to the earth's environment, resulting in incorrect interpretation of data.
What are the main areas of current research focus?
The research direction is very broad, in addition to the traditional rock minerals, do chemical composition of these research, there is also to do life, make materials, to fibrosis, and then to do material research related to weaving.
The standard for applying for lunar soil samples is very strict, when it is lent out, it is to weigh again, and when it is returned, it is also necessary to weigh again, not only to control its weight, but also to indicate what experiments the sample may have done before, we have to number separately. In this way, if you apply again, you will know what effect the previous experiment of this sample will have on it.
So the sample is now more and more divided, which is equivalent to a number below another subnumber, and there may be another subnumber, so there are more and more.
The sample inside a cabinet is a raw sample that has not been exposed to the atmosphere. The original samples of all their applications were taken out of this cabinet. The returned samples are all in another cabinet, and the samples in this cabinet are all samples that come back after borrowing, and will not be in contact with the most original samples, some samples may have been exposed to the atmosphere, and some may be in contact with some chemical composition analysis.
Source: CCTV News