Moon landing just another step away
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The launch vehicle for the satellite, China's Long March 3C rocket, is 54.84 meters long with a lift-off weight of 345 tonnes. The delivery capacity of the rocket is 3.8 tonnes.
It was the Long March series rocket's 131th trip into space.
Total expenditure for the Chang'e-2 mission is about 900 million yuan (134.33 million U.S. dollars).
The final destiny of Chang'e-2 had not been decided, Wu said. It may crash on the moon for further experiment, or fly into further outer space, or return to the earth orbit, Wu said.
Compared with Chang'e-1's more than one year of life span, Huang Chuanjiang, chief designer of the Chang'e-2, said six-month of designed life span of Chang'e-2 was enough for it to fulfill its mission.
Wu Weiren explained the shorter life span was also due to more fuel the satellite has to consume as it has more experiments to conduct.
Wu did not rule out the possibility of extending the service time of the satellite.
Flying to the moon is the nation's long cherished dream, as Chang'e has been worshipped as the "moon lady" for thousands of years. Legend has it that she floated toward the sky and finally landed on the moon after taking a bottle of elixir, where she became a goddess accompanied by a jade rabbit.
China launched its first lunar probe, Chang'e-1, in October 2007, marking a milestone in the country's space exploration.
After orbiting for about 16 months and a controlled crash on the lunar surface, Chang'e-1 sent back 1.37 terabytes of data, producing China's first complete moon picture. The data has been shared with other countries for free.
China's ambitious three-stage moon mission will lead to a moon landing and launch of a moon rover around 2013 in the second phase. In the third stage, another rover will land on the moon and return to earth with lunar soil and stone samples for scientific research before 2020.
China became the third country after Russia and the United States to send a person into space in 2003.
Two more manned space missions followed with the most recent in 2008 involving China's first human space walk.
Talking about the manned moon landing, Wu said China has no plan or timetable for it for now. It will not happen before 2020, he added.
China's moon mission aims at peaceful use of the outer space, and China hopes to expand cooperation with other countries on the basis of equality and mutual benefits, Wu said.
"For instance, the European Space Agency has provided their space stations to help us monitor the satellite when it goes beyond what we could monitor, which expends the monitoring time. We also share our data with them for free," he added.
Despite increasing exchanges, Wu said it is essential that China relies on itself to develop key space technology since the-state-of-the-art technology could not be purchased from others.
Once the moon mission completed, it is entirely possible for China to probe other planets such as Venus and Mars, and then step into other planets in the solar system, he said.
Over the past 52 years, 127 moon missions have been launched worldwide, of which 57 by the United State, 64 by the Soviet Union, two by Japan and China and one by India and European Space Agency.
About half of those missions failed.
Although China started its moon mission rather late, the mission plans have been carried out step by step, Wu said.
Ouyang Ziyuan, a renowned scientist who pioneered China's moon mission, said the United States and Russia belong to the first echelon in terms of moon mission technology, while China belongs to the second tier which also includes Japan, India and Europe.
Though the competition was intense, nations should improve cooperation on moon mission for the benefits of the entire human being. It is also the shared responsibility of all scientists, Ouyang said.
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Unmanned lunar probe, Chang'e-2 |
