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Chang'e-6 will be launched at an opportune time in early May. On April 27, after the Chang'e-6 probe and the Long March 5 Yao-8 carrier rocket completed the relevant work in the technical area at the Wenchang Space Launch Site in mainland China, the instrument-rocket assembly has been vertically transferred to the launch area.
The Chang'e-6 probe and the Long March 5 Yao-8 carrier rocket arrived at the launch site in January and March respectively, and preparations for final assembly and testing have been completed one after another. In the future, various functional inspections, joint tests, and propellant filling will be carried out as planned.
The Chang'e-6 mission is planned to go to the far side of the Moon, the South Pole-Aitken Basin, which is the area of the Moon that has been hit violently and may retain information about the early Moon.
Chang'e-6 will carry out topography exploration and geological background surveys there, to discover and collect lunar samples of different regions and ages, and to achieve many scientific goals.
Next, the Chang'e-6 mission will carry out various functional inspections, joint tests, propellant refueling and other work as planned to prepare for launch.
The Long March 5, which is responsible for sending Chang'e-6 into space, is the most powerful high-orbit carrier rocket in the mainland. This is also the second time it has undertaken the launch of the lunar exploration project after the Chang'e-5 mission.
The Long March 5 carrier rocket is a large cryogenic liquid strap-on launch vehicle, with a total length of nearly 60 meters, a take-off mass of about 869 tons, and four boosters bundled, with a carrying capacity of 25 tons in low earth orbit and 14 tons in geosynchronous transfer orbit.
It is reported that after the launch of the Chang'e-5 mission, the Long March 5 team upgraded and optimized the rocket, which not only increased the carrying capacity of the rocket's Earth-Moon transfer orbit by 100 kilograms, but also greatly improved the reliability of the rocket.
Editor: Zhang Boxi