April 24 is the ninth China Space Day.
On the same day, at the opening ceremony of the main event of the 2024 "China Space Day", the China National Space Administration released the latest news on the progress of cooperation between the International Lunar Research Station and the international payload carrying project of the Chang'e-7 mission.
Three new countries and institutions have been added to the International Lunar Research Station: Nicaragua, the Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization, and the Arab Astronomy and Space Science Union. China will work with its partners to carry out cooperation in the demonstration, implementation, operation and application of the International Lunar Research Station.
Animation of the basic structure of the lunar research station
According to the Guidelines for Partners of the International Lunar Research Station issued by the China National Space Administration, the International Lunar Research Station aims at "peaceful use, equality and mutual benefit, and common development", and through multinational cooperation, it will jointly build a comprehensive scientific experiment facility on the lunar surface and in the lunar orbit that can operate autonomously for a long time, with short-term manned participation, and can be expanded and maintained.
According to the scientific objectives of the payload and the principles of engineering realizability, six payloads from seven countries and international organizations, including Egypt, Bahrain, Italy, Russia, Switzerland, Thailand, and the International Association of Lunar Astronomical Observatories, were finally selected.
The lander will carry a laser corner reflector array developed by the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics and Frascati National Laboratory to provide support for high-precision measurement of the lunar surface and orbit determination and navigation of the orbiter, a lunar dust and electric field detector developed by the Russian Academy of Space Science to study the dust plasma environment in the exosphere of the moon near the surface, and a moon-based astronomical observation telescope developed by the International Association of Lunar Astronomical Observatories to carry out moon-based observations of the Milky Way, the Earth and the panoramic sky.
The orbiter will be equipped with a hyperspectral imager for lunar surface materials jointly developed by the Egyptian Space Agency and the National Space Science Agency of Bahrain for the analysis and identification of lunar surface materials and the environment; a moon-based dual-channel Earth radiation spectrometer developed by the Physical and Meteorological Observatory (World Radiation Center) in Davos, Switzerland, to monitor changes in the radiation budget of the Earth's climate system from the Moon; and a space weather global monitoring and sensing device developed by the Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Innovation and the National Astronomical Institute of Thailand to warn of magnetic disturbances and cosmic radiation caused by solar storms.
The Chang'e-7 mission, scheduled to be launched around 2026, will survey the lunar surface environment at the south pole of the moon, lunar soil water ice and volatiles, and carry out high-precision exploration and research on the lunar topography, composition and structure. As of January 2023, the China National Space Administration has received a total of 18 letters of intent from 11 countries and international organizations.