China’s Chang’e 6 mission successfully delivered the first samples from the far side of the Moon to Earth. But what happened to the lander that collected the lunar material?
Chang’e 6 launched on May 3. The mission consisted of four spacecraft – an orbiter, a lander, an ascent and a re-entry capsule. The drop-down module landed in Apollo Crater on June 1, with the primary task of retrieving and drilling unique samples from the far side of the moon and loading them into the ascender to be launched into lunar orbit.
The samples eventually reached Earth on June 25, touch down as planned in grasslands in Inner Mongolia.
Meanwhile, the Chang’e 6 lander remains powered up The moon. It also carried other payloads, including a panoramic camera and a small rover. Insights into the fate of the lander came recently from the French space agency CNES, which contributed a radon detection payload called DORN to the mission.
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“As planned, DORN was shut down shortly before Chang’e 6 lifted off from the lunar surface when the ground platform became inactive,” the CNES press office said in an email.
The launch of the ascent probably caused extensive damage to the descent module, although the latter was able to capture footage of the event. Accordingly, all activities — including autonomous deployment of the rover and imaging of the lander — were packed before takeoff. This includes another European instrument which records previously undetected charged particles on the surface of the moon.
If any activities were carried out after the liftoff, they would have ceased as night fell over Apollo Crater. Unlike the one still in operation Chang’e 3 and Chang’e 4 landers on the near and far sides of the moon, respectively, Chang’e 6’s lander did not carry the radioisotope heaters required for long-term lunar activities, which require survival in the deep cold of the long lunar night. Night at Apollo Crater began on June 11, and the sun rose again over the site on June 26.
Meanwhile, the ascender that carried the samples from the moon to the waiting Chang’e 6 spacecraft in lunar orbit is also no longer operational. Although Chinese space authorities have not commented on the Ascender’s fate, the rocket was likely responsible for deorbiting to the Moon after docking with the orbiter and transferring the samples.
Radio amateur Scott Tilley tracked signals from the ascender, the absence of which suggested that it had been instructed to impact the moon.
A quick update on the Chang’e 6 mission. The Ascender did not appear today, indicating that it was deorbited and impacted on the Moon, as CE5 did after the expected mission schedule. The orbiter is behaving normally and has been in and out of contact with Argentina all day.June 8, 2024
China appears to have adopted the sample protocol with its Chang’e 5 mission, which returned samples from the near side of the moon to Earth in late 2020.
After all other aspects were packed, the re-entry capsule and the samples inside were transported to Beijing on Wednesday (June 26). The samples will soon be transferred to specially designed storage, analysis and distribution facilities for research.
Meanwhile, the Queqiao 2 lunar relay satellite, which helped facilitate the far-side sampling mission, will continue to orbit with its scientific payloads. It will support the current and upcoming Chang’e 4 mission Chang’e 7 mission that will be aimed at the south pole of the Moon around 2026.
