Special report: China launches first lunar
orbiter
BEIJING, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- China
has no plan or timetable for a manned moon landing for now, senior Chinese lunar
scientists told Xinhua on Thursday, a day after the nation launched its first
lunar probe, Chang'e-1.
"A manned moon landing is a project with great
difficulties, high risks and huge investments. A wish-list approach is not the
way to go about it," said Luan Enjie, chief commander of China's lunar orbiter
project.
"Many factors have to be taken into account to carry
out such a project, such as economic budgets, technological level, and whether
it is a must for current scientific studies," Luan said.
"So, it's too early to talk about manned landings on
the moon for the time being," he added.
Chang'e-1, named after a legendary Chinese goddess
who flew to the moon, blasted off on a Long March 3A carrier rocket at 6:05 p.m.
Wednesday from the No. 3 launching tower in the Xichang Satellite Launch Center
in southwestern Sichuan Province.
The satellite launch marks the first step of China's
three-stage moon mission, which will lead to an unmanned moon landing and launch
of a moon rover around 2012.
In the third phase, another rover will land on the
moon and return to earth with lunar soil and stone samples for scientific
research around 2017.
Sources with the Commission of Science Technology and
Industry for National Defense said that China has finished working out an
overall plan for carrying out the second phase of the moon program.
But according to Sun Laiyan, deputy head of the
commission, China is still far from being capable of sending a man onto the
moon, considering its current technology and capacity of launch vehicle.
In addition, it is a very complicated process from
manned space flight to manned moon landing, and China has to crack lots of tough
technological problems, such as allowing the taikonauts to walk out of the
spacecraft, the rendezvous and docking of the spacecraft, the return of
taikonauts from the lunar surface, and survival on the moon, said Sun Jiadong,
chief designer of China's lunar orbiter project.
"We don't possess those technologies for now, and we
cannot solve those problems in a short period of time," he said.
While Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of China's lunar
orbiter project, told Xinhua that, after all, it is the first time that China
has launched a lunar probe, and subsequent scientific research will grow with
the deepening of China's lunar explorations.
His feelings were echoed by Luan.
"Humanity will go through three phases in lunar
explorations, including lunar probing, manned moon landing and setting up a
lunar base. Lunar probing is just a single, isolated incident without a
long-term vision," he said.
The 2,300-kg moon orbiter, Chang'e-1, carried eight
probing facilities, including a stereo camera and interferometer, an imager and
gamma/x-ray spectrometer, a laser altimeter, a microwave detector, a high-energy
solar particle detector and a low-energy ion detector.
It will fulfil four scientific objectives, including
a three-dimensional survey of the moon's surface, analysis of distribution and
amounts of elements on the lunar surface, an investigation of the
characteristics of lunar mantle rock and the powdery soil layer on the surface,
and an exploration of the environment between the Earth and the Moon.
The satellite is expected to enter earth-moon
transfer orbit on Oct. 31 and arrive in the moon's orbit on Nov. 5. It will
relay the first pictures of the moon in late November and will then continue
scientific explorations of the moon for a year.
The milestone lunar orbiter project has cost 1 to 1.4
billion yuan (about 133 to 187 million U.S. dollars) since research and
development of the project was approved at the beginning of 2004.
China carried out its maiden piloted space flight in
October 2003, making it only the third country in the world after the Soviet
Union and the United States to have sent men into space. In October 2005, China
completed its second manned space flight, with two astronauts on board.
