Today is the ninth China Space Day
This year is also the 20th anniversary of the official establishment of the mainland's lunar exploration project.
For thousands of years, mankind has never stopped longing for and exploring the moon. On China's Space Day, let us review the extraordinary journey of China's lunar exploration.
The seeds of China's dream of lunar exploration
Let's start with a strange stone
In 1958, a very strange thing happened in Nandan, Guangxi, people found that a kind of iron ore was put in a high-temperature furnace and never melted, which attracted the attention of Ouyang Ziyuan, a young geologist who was only 23 years old. He took this strange stone, and after scientific analysis, it was determined that it was an iron meteorite, which was the first time he had seen a meteorite, and in the face of this "visitor from outside the sky", he found an incision to explore the solar system by studying geology, and since then he has opened his fate with meteorites, and the seeds of China's dream of exploring the moon are meteorites.
In 1978, the U.S. special envoy Zbigniew Brzezinski visited China and presented China with a lunar rock sample weighing only one gram. This was Ouyang Ziyuan's first intimate contact with the moon, which stimulated his enthusiasm for research. In the following 45 years, he actively formed a scientific research team and devoted himself to the research of lunar and Mars exploration. In 2004, after sustained efforts and expectations, the "Chang'e-1" project report was approved, and Ouyang Ziyuan was appointed as the chief scientist of China's lunar exploration project, Luan Enjie as the chief commander of the project, and Sun Jiadong as the chief designer.
Chang'e explores the moon and chases dreams for nine days
After the official launch of China's lunar exploration program, it was given a romantic and Chinese name "Chang'e". In the long-term plan of the project submitted by Ouyang Ziyuan, the mainland's Chang'e lunar exploration project is divided into three stages: the "circumambulation" stage, in which Chang'e-1 and Chang'e-2 will conduct a comprehensive exploration of the lunar surface; in the "moon landing" stage, Chang'e-3 and Chang'e-4 will launch spacecraft and land on the moon in a soft landing, and rovers and robots will carry out lunar exploration; and in the "return" stage, the collected lunar samples will be brought back to the earth to provide valuable information for manned lunar landings and the establishment of lunar bases.
On November 5, 2007, Chang'e-1 successfully entered the lunar orbit after several orbit changes. On November 12, 2008, China's first three-dimensional map of the moon taken by Chang'e-1 was released, which was the first high-precision image of the lunar surface in human history, with a resolution of 120 meters, which was the highest resolution map of the moon published in the world at that time.
Immediately after, Chang'e-2 was launched in 2010 with a high-definition camera to complete a more detailed exploration of the Moon, explore the Sun-Earth Lagrange L2 point, and then fly by the asteroid Toutatis, opening a new chapter in China's deep space exploration. Chang'e-3 and Chang'e-4, which are the second stage of "falling on the moon", are characterized by the addition of the "Jade Rabbit" rover. In 2013, the "Yutu-1" rover successfully sailed to the lunar surface to conduct topography and underground structure exploration. In 2019, Chang'e-4 and Yutu-2 achieved the first soft landing and exploration on the far side of the moon. In 2020, Chang'e-5 completed the unmanned sample return to the moon, marking that the mainland has the ability to travel back and forth between the Earth and the Moon, and has achieved the perfect conclusion of the three-step plan of "orbiting, landing, and returning", adding glory to China's space technology.
Looking to the future
The dream of the moon in nine days is coming true
This year, China will comprehensively advance the fourth phase of the lunar exploration program, including the Chang'e-6, Chang'e-7 and Chang'e-8 missions. To this end, in March this year, the "Queqiao-2" relay satellite was successfully launched to replace the "Queqiao" relay satellite that was "overdue", and it will become a new "Queqiao" between the Earth and the Moon, which can provide high-quality relay communications between the Earth and the Moon for Chang'e-4, 6, 7 and 8.
Chang'e-6 will also be launched this year, with plans to collect more samples from the far side of the moon to achieve the 2,000-gram target. In addition, "Chang'e-6" has also increased the content of international cooperation, carrying payloads and satellite projects of four countries including France, Italy, and Pakistan, which will be France's first lunar space project and the first Sino-French lunar exploration cooperation; The mainland will carry out a manned landing on the moon by 2030, and in the near future, the moon will also leave Chinese footprints.
In the past 20 years, Chang'e has been turning from a legend to a reality step by step, thanks to the unremitting efforts of a large number of Chinese scientists, including Ouyang Ziyuan. In 2014, the International Commission on Asteroid Nomenclature named asteroid 8919 "Ouyang Ziyuanxing". Exploring the universe and using space peacefully is the dream of all mankind, and China's aerospace industry has always adhered to the consistent purpose of peaceful exploration of outer space and has continuously contributed to human aerospace exploration.