Beijing (Efe / Antonio Broto) -. Thirty-seven years after the USSR undertake the above landing a man-made artifact, China managed posing on the floor Moon probe Chang’e 3 , reactivating a branch of the space race, the lunar exploration , that seemed forgotten since the milestones of 60 and 70.
The third mission of the Chinese lunar probe Chang E, and christened in honor of a goddess as oriental legends live on the moon, landed lightly on the earth satellite, almost without lifting moondust, at 21:12 hour Chinese Local on Saturday (13:12 GMT), 12 days after leaving the base of Xichang.
maneuver began at the nearest of the orbits in which the probe is located in the last days, 15 kilometers investigations of the surface, from where it began to slow its original speed of 1.7 kilometers per second (6,120 km / h).
Describing
a downward parabola, the ship was placed perpendicular on the Moon about 100 feet high, and from there planned to plain Sinus Iridium (Bay of Rainbows), a large basaltic plain never before explored.
Broadcast live on several channels of Chinese state television CCTV, is the maneuver space program, according to the Asian country, one of the most complex actions in the history of the national space race.
achievement makes China the third country in the world to be able to perform controlled landings, after the U.S. and the USSR, and to the Asian power is also its first landing on an extraterrestrial object.
previous soft landing had been to the moon probe 24 of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the August 18, 1976.
During his approach to the moon today, the Chinese probe gave very clear images of the lunar surface, helped by the absence of atmosphere and found in the illuminated face of the earth satellite.
few minutes after landing on the moon, Chang E 3 solar panels deployed in order to accumulate the energy required to activate the surface of the mobile robot selenite Yutu (Jade Rabbit), which was separated from the probe seven hours after landing, at 4:35 local time on Sunday (20:35 GMT Saturday).
powered by solar and panels equipped with six wheels, a mechanical arm and three pairs of cameras, the Jade Rabbit-name chosen by popular vote-is capable of digging and probing by radar at depths up to one hundred meters.
“walk” of the Moon Yutu mark another milestone as the only country that has so far deployed mobile robots on the Moon has also been the USSR, and the last time I got it was 40 years ago, with the Lunokhod 2 (1973).
China launched its first lunar probe, the Chang’e 1, 2007, and the second, Chang E 2, in 2010.
China seeks long-term carrying astronauts to Earth’s satellite, and although there is still no date set for this is expected to be around 2020, a time that China also hopes to have a permanent space station orbiting Earth .
Before
, China plans to send a fourth lunar probe in 2015 and another in 2017, with this being the first mission capable of returning to Earth, clear preparations for a manned mission in the more distant future.
USA is the only country that has managed to send astronauts to the Moon, the first time in July 1969 (Apollo 11) and most recently in December 1972, with the seventeenth and final mission of the Apollo program.
80 Washington and Moscow completely abandoned lunar flights, and even resumed in 90 (decade when Japan joined the race for lunar exploration), since all sent probes made landings soft, but crashed into the Moon.
“Facing the past century space race between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union, the ‘return to the Moon’ today is based more on curiosity and courage to explore the unknown universe,” said the Sun engineer today Haixian, deputy director of China’s lunar exploration program, quoted by the official news agency Xinhua.
success achieved today by China, whose space program seeks to demonstrate that it can compete with traditional technological powers after decades of underdevelopment and international isolation, occurs ten years after the Asian country to launch its first astronaut into space Yang Liwei.
No comments:
Post a Comment