According to radio signals monitored by amateur astronomer Scott Tilley, China's Chang'e-6 orbiter has once again changed orbit and maneuvered, flying farther and entering a new orbital area, which has also been visited by the mainland's Chang'e-2 spacecraft.
What is this for? Where is the Chang'e-6 orbiter going?
If it weren't for the Chang'e-6 mission, which had already brought back 1,935.3 grams of lunar samples, what else was going on? Let's take a look at it step by step.
It can only be said that there must be a certain reason for changing its orbit and maneuvering, otherwise it would not have entered these tasks for no reason.
Chang'e-6 – orbiter
The Chang'e-6 mission is the most classic space mission to be carried out in 2024, and has completed the first Chinese and even the world's first mission to sample the far side of the moon. The entire Chang'e-6 is composed of four parts: an orbiter, a lander, an ascent, and a returner.
Of course, the functions of each of these four parts are certainly different, in which the lander is responsible for landing on the lunar surface for sampling, and the ascender is responsible for carrying the "soil" to the sky and handing over the samples, and the two are collectively called the landing combination.
The orbiter is responsible for the round-trip of the Earth and the Moon and the transfer of samples, and the returner is responsible for landing on the ground and sending back samples, which are also called orbit-return combinations.
Therefore, the four major combinations completed the sampling of the far side of the continental moon. Of course, in the process of sampling, it is also a technical challenge for the mainland, and part of the process is similar to the future manned lunar landing program of the mainland.
Therefore, this mission is also regarded by many people as an important technical verification link for the mainland to carry out a manned lunar mission, and this time it was a success, and it also perfectly verified the technology, bringing back 1935.3 grams of lunar samples, and also achieving another breakthrough in continental lunar sampling.
Of course, in the sampling process of Chang'e-6 lunar samples, there is a more prominent highlight, that is, Chang'e-6 adopts a retrograde lunar orbit, and its flight direction is opposite to the rotation direction of the moon.
The retrograde orbit can increase the relative velocity between the probe and the Moon, make the orbiter better stable in the orbit around the Moon, and avoid changing the installation position of the probe's solar wings, sensors and other devices.
Therefore, it is not easy for the mainland Chang'e-6 lunar sample, which also requires some support from the orbiter.
This time, the Chang'e-6 orbiter changed its orbit again and achieved another breakthrough, which can be regarded as another highlight of the mainland after the end of the entire Chang'e-6 mission, that is, the radio signal released by the Chang'e-6 orbiter was captured, showing that the Chang'e-6 orbiter was already near the Sun-Earth Lagrange L2 point.
What is the Chang'e-6 orbiter going to do?
Indeed, during the process of the mainland Chang'e-6 mission, there was no disclosure of the correlation before, so what are you going to do? It may be to conduct some experiments to maximize the capabilities of the Chang'e-6 orbiter.
Moreover, if you don't know what to do, you may find some points from some of the previous plans of the mainland's Chang'e-2. Continental Chang'e-2 had previously entered the Lagrange L2 orbit under control and became the third country and organization in the world to visit L2 after ESA and United States.
Of course, this mission is a "special" mission, and there are certain differences from the Chang'e-6 orbiter, and Chang'e-2 has achieved a number of first-time achievements after going to orbit around the L2 point, such as:
- For the first time in the world, space activities were launched from the lunar orbit to explore the Lagrange point
- For the first time, the exploration of the farther reaches of the moon was realized
- For the first time, the design and control of the Lagrange point transfer orbit and the mission orbit were carried out, and 1.5 million kilometers of long-distance TT&C communication was realized
At the same time, Chang'e-2 also carried payloads such as solar wind ion detector, solar high-energy particle detector, X-ray spectrometer and γ-ray spectrometer, which further promoted the research of deep space science on the mainland.
As for the orbiter of Chang'e-6, whether there are some special loads, the mainland did not say, but since it has gone to this area, there will definitely be some things to do.
Therefore, it depends on whether the mainland will announce its problems in the future, but the changes in its activities also show that the continent's exploration direction in the space field has been further expanded, and in the course of each mission, there may be "expansionary" missions, and in the end, the Chang'e-6 orbiter will go where and what it will do, the mainland has not explained.
However, judging from the previous situation of the orbiter of Chang'e-5 on the mainland, the mainland should have a lot of equipment on it, such as: high-definition CCD cameras and spectral analysis and other related equipment, which can do relevant surveys on lunar resources.
In addition, in order to ensure smooth communication between the Earth and the Moon, there should also be a solar wind ion detector to detect a famous magnetic anomaly on the surface of the moon.
To put it bluntly, the orbiter of Chang'e-6 is equivalent to a probe, and its remaining fuel can ensure that it works for a long time, so it will be used thoroughly to do more detailed tasks for future lunar missions, and it will not provide important support for future continental lunar or deep space exploration missions, which is the general situation.
We look forward to the early results of Chang'e-6
That's right, as the world's first sample returned from sampling on the far side of the moon, I am really looking forward to its results, as can be seen from the results of Chang'e-5 on the mainland, and many of the world's first achievements are appearing.
In about 3 grams of Chang'e-5 lunar soil samples, Li Qiuli, a researcher at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and other researchers picked out about 3,000 glass beads and screened them.
By measuring the sulfur isotope value, the research team found a "fingerprint" information for the volcanic glass beads – if a glass bead has a negative sulfur isotope value, it should be formed by volcanism.
Of the 6 "candidates" of volcanic glass beads, 3 have this characteristic. Combining various evidences, the research team finally completed the task of "one in a thousand" and subjected them to uranium-lead isotopes, and the conclusion was surprising that these volcanic glass beads were formed about 120 million years ago.
This once again rewrote the history of volcanic activity on the Moon. Therefore, what surprising results exist in Chang'e-6, everyone has been waiting in a hurry, if you can see the results earlier, it will be a sensational event, it can be said that under any of the results of Chang'e-6 lunar soil research, it may be the first achievement in lunar research, because human beings have not yet obtained samples on the far side of the moon, and the inevitable results are almost "unprecedented".
Therefore, I don't know how long it will take to see the research news, the more I think about it, the more crazy it becomes, I believe that the rest of the world is also very concerned about the results of the Chang'e-6 lunar samples, after all, it can let everyone know the different points of the moon, this is the general situation.
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