Lunar program of the People's Republic of China

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Chang'e Mission Profile 4

The Lunar Program of the People's Republic of China ( Chinese  中國 探 月 工程  /  中国 探 月 工程 , Pinyin Zhōngguó Tànyuè Gōngchéng , English Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, CLEP for short ) is a program to explore the moon with unmanned space probes and, in a possible later phase, with manned spacecraft . It is coordinated by the China National Space Administration , the space agency of the People's Republic of China .

Components of the program are previously moon orbiter ( Chang'e 1 and Chang'e 2 ), Lunar Rover ( Chang'e 3 and Chang'e-4 ) and Rückholmissionen with which moon rocks on the ground is to be placed ( Chang'e -5 and Chang'e-6). During the test mission Chang'e 5-T1 in the years 2014/15, the atmospheric braking of an unmanned or manned return capsule returning from the moon as well as the orbital maneuvers and satellite navigation of transport spacecraft shuttling back and forth between earth and moon on a free return path with minimal use of fuel were tested.

history

The People's Republic of China's lunar program began in 1991 when the Chinese Academy of Sciences suggested that China conduct its own lunar exploration missions. As part of the “ Program 863 ”, that is, the National Program for the Promotion of High Technology, which was started in March 1986 under Deng Xiaoping , a project group lunar exploration (月球 探测 课题组) was formed, which raised funds from the 8th Five-Year Plan (1991–1995 ) secured. In 1994 the Academy of Sciences was able to submit a full feasibility study for a lunar exploration program and the first funds were released. In 1998 the academy's experts defined the individual sub-projects that were necessary for a lunar exploration:

  • Telemetry, tracking and long-range control
  • Protection of electronics from space radiation, heat and cold
  • Calculation of the flight path and the orbit as well as the necessary orbit correction maneuvers
  • Correct alignment of the probes on the lunar surface
  • Automatic avoidance of boulders and steeply sloping surfaces on landings
  • Largely autonomous vehicle

Ouyang Ziyuan , head of the Institute of Geochemistry at the Chinese Academy of Sciences since 1988 and an expert on extraterrestrial material such as meteorites , cosmic dust and lunar rocks , had already pointed out in 1992 in a report requested by the Lunar Exploration Project Group that not only the well-known large ore deposits like Iron, the nuclear fuel thorium and above all the light metal titanium, which is used in aerospace, could be the target of lunar missions, but also the mining of lunar helium-3 , which is considered an ideal fuel for a nuclear fusion power plant. China has been working specifically on nuclear fusion reactors since 1994. Accordingly, the title of the final report submitted by the project group in 2000 was: “Scientific goals of a probe for the exploration of mineral resources on the moon through China” (中国 月球 资源 探测 卫星 科学 目标).

Until then, the existence of the lunar program had been kept confidential. On November 22, 2000, the State Council of the People's Republic of China publicly mentioned for the first time in its “White Paper on Chinese Space Activities” under the heading “Long-term goals (for the next 20 years)” that China intended to conduct “preliminary studies” for an exploration of the moon . This did not exactly describe the state of the project, however, and at a conference on deep space exploration convened by the then Commission for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense in January 2001 in Harbin , the scientists urged the details of the lunar program to be made public.

A good year and a half later, the specialist audience was initially informed at an international conference on the technology and practical benefits of deep space exploration , which was held in Qingdao on August 13, 2002 with the participation of representatives from the National Space Agency of China , NASA , Roscosmos and ESA . The information of the Chinese public took over on May 26, 2003 Ouyang Ziyuan with an extremely detailed lecture in a popular science television series. Among other things, he dealt with the ore deposits, especially the 150 quadrillion tons of titanium stored on the moon (“you can't mine that much that it comes to an end”). Ouyang also mentioned the - not signed by China - lunar treaty of 1979. According to his interpretation, the moon belongs to the international community, but it is not regulated in the treaty that the resources of the moon may not be exploited; de facto it is the case that whoever is the first to use it can be the first to make a profit from it (谁先 利用 ， 谁先 获益).

Now the concrete phase of the program was entered. In September 2003 the Commission for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense formed a "Leadership Group Lunar Exploration Project" (月球 探测 工程 领导 小组, Pinyin Yuèqiú Tàncè Gōngchéng Lǐngdǎo Xiǎozǔ ), chaired by Zhang Yunchuan ( 张云川 , * 1946), the head of the defense technology Commission, personally took over. The task of this management group was on the one hand to coordinate the work of the numerous companies and institutions involved in the project. For example, the payloads of the lunar probes are developed by the National Center for Space Sciences of the Academy of Sciences, then the contracts for the construction of said payloads are awarded to individual companies, with supervision and responsibility remaining with the Center for Space Sciences. On the other hand, the leadership group had to draw up a report for the State Council with a preliminary schedule and the individual steps of a national lunar exploration program. This report was submitted at the end of 2003.

Program structure

The Chinese lunar program consists of three great steps ( 大 三步 ):

  • [Unmanned] exploration ( 探 )
  • [Manned] landing ( 登 )
  • Stationing [a permanent crew] ( 驻 )

You are currently taking the first big step, unmanned exploration, which in turn is divided into three small steps ( 小 三步 ):

  • Orbit ( 绕 )
  • Landing ( 落 )
  • Return ( 回 )

The first Small Step of the second Big Step begins around 2024 with the unmanned exploration of the area on the far side of the moon, near the South Pole, intended for a future base, by the Chang'e-7 probe.

Orbit (Chang'e-1, 2007 and Chang'e-2, 2010)

On January 24, 2004, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao officially started the People's Republic of China's lunar program with his signature on the report of the lunar exploration project leadership group, the funds for the first big step (1.4 billion yuan, purchasing power around 1.4 billion euros ) released and approved the construction of the unmanned orbiter Chang'e-1 ; the geologist Ouyang Ziyuan was named chief scientist of the Chang'e program on the occasion. More important than the personal was that on 2 June 2004, a few months after the official start of the lunar program, at the headquarters of the National Space Agency in Beijing a "Center for Monderkundungs- and space projects" (国家航天局探月与航天工程中心, Pinyin Guójiā Hángtiānjú Tànyuè Yǔ Hángtiān Gōngchéng Zhōngxīn ), which is responsible for all technical and administrative aspects of the lunar exploration project and the manned space flight. His tasks include:

  • Preparation of the overall planning of a project
  • Planning the development process with the sequence of the individual steps
  • Formulation of the requirements for the individual components
  • Conclusion of contracts with supplier companies
  • Management of fixed assets
  • Preparation of cost estimates for the individual spaceships and probes as well as important sub-projects
  • Monitor and control expenses
  • Coordination, supervision and control of all systems of the projects
  • public relation
  • Management and exploitation of copyrights on the knowledge gained
  • Recruiting and supporting investors
  • Establishment and maintenance of an archive

The first plans for the Chang'e-1 mission were completed in September 2004. Then, under the direction of Ye Peijian , chief engineer in the data processing department of the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) since 1989 and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences since 2003, the development of the first prototype of the probe began; the first tests took place on December 20, 2004. In July 2006 the final prototype was manufactured and tested and the system integration phase was started. On July 27, 2006, the Defense Technology Commission finally signed a contract with the Space Technology Academy for the production of the real probe. This was completed in December 2006 and successfully passed the final acceptance on January 5, 2007. On October 24, 2007, Chang'e-1 was launched from the Xichang Cosmodrome . On March 1, 2009, Chang'e-1 hit the moon at 9:13 a.m. CET at 1.5 degrees south and 52.36 degrees east in Mare Fecunditatis .

Zhang Yunchuan, chairman of the lunar exploration project leadership group at the National Defense Science, Technology and Industry Commission, was a party-only cadre who had never had anything to do with space travel before he was appointed head of the commission in March 2003. When he was named party secretary of Hebei Province with effect from August 30, 2007 , he handed over his positions in the Defense Technology Commission and the Moon Leadership Group to Zhang Qingwei , who, after completing his master's degree in aircraft control in March 1988, first attended the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology , then from July 1, 1999 at China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation , where he has been CEO since November 2001. So a highly competent space specialist.

Then, however, on March 15, 2008, the Defense Technology Commission was dissolved as part of a reform of the organs of the State Council. The National Space Agency, which until then was subordinate to the Defense Technology Commission, became subordinate to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology with effect from March 21, 2008 . As since April 23, 2004, the cryogenics engineer Sun Laiyan (孙 来 燕, * 1957) retained its leadership . Zhang Qingwei went back into business and became chairman of the board of the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China . The lunar exploration project leadership group remained under the umbrella of the Center for Lunar Exploration and Space Projects at the National Space Agency. It was chaired by the electrical engineer Chen Qiufa (陈 求 发, * 1954), until then deputy head of the Defense Technology Commission. Chen Qiufa had actually written his thesis at the University of Defense Technology of the People's Liberation Army in Changsha on the subject of " Electronic Warfare ", but has always worked in the aerospace sector since then. On July 31, 2010, he succeeded Sun Laiyan as director of the National Space Agency.

In order to precisely document the planned landing site for a lunar exploration on the ground, there was another lunar orbiter in the first phase. Chang'e-2 , basically identical to Chang'e-1, but with further developed measuring devices and an intermediate memory for the collected data that is three times larger than the previous probe, started on October 1, 2010 and circled the moon at a height of 100 km, so hoor half as high as in Chang'e-1. When the probe had mapped 99.9% of the lunar surface after seven months, the point of the orbit closest to the moon was lowered so far in May 2011 that it was only 15 km above the planned landing site of the successor mission in Mare Imbrium .

Actually, Chang'e-2 would have reached the end of its expected lifespan on April 1, 2011. However, since all systems were still working properly, it was decided to take the opportunity and gain experience for future deep-space missions. On the one hand, the aim was to test the effective range of the transmitters in the ground stations subordinate to the Xi'an satellite control center, which were originally only built to control reconnaissance and communication satellites in orbit. On the other hand it was about the measurement of the solar wind, that means the endangerment of electronics and possibly people in interplanetary space. On June 9, 2011 Chang'e-2 left the lunar orbit, first went to the Lagrangian point L 2 of the sun-earth system, then to the near-earth asteroid (4179) Toutatis . The probe then broke into interplanetary space on an elongated elliptical orbit. On February 14, 2014, Chang'e-2 was already 70 million kilometers from Earth. Connectivity was then lost, but the probe is expected to return to 7 million kilometers in 2029 after reaching the apogee of its orbit 300 million kilometers away .

Landing (Chang'e-3, 2013 and Chang'e-4, 2018)

After the orbiter Chang'e-2 had documented in detail the rainbow bay or Sinus Iridum of the Mare Imbrium , i.e. the planned landing site of the next probe, with its high-resolution 3D camera, Chang'e-3 took place on December 14, 2013 the first unmanned lunar landing of the Chinese lunar program. A moon rover named Yutu was on the lunar surface for three months. The 1.5 meter high and 140 kilogram rover was designed to transmit video to earth in real time and to analyze soil samples. The operation of the rover was similar to that of the unmanned NASA missions Spirit and Opportunity . Solar cells were used to supply energy , and the rover was put into standby mode during the night cycles .

During the orbit missions, an attempt was first made to minimize the risk by using tried and tested technology for the payloads, while the second attempt a newly developed camera - for chief developer Xu Zhihai received the Zhejiang Province Science Prize in 2012 - and a correspondingly expanded cache for which data was used. In an analogous procedure, the level of difficulty of the successor mission for Chang'e-3 was significantly increased. While Chang'e-3 landed on the earth-facing side of the moon and was therefore always in view of some ground station, for Chang'e-4 , a basically identical combination of lander and rover to Chang'e-3, a landing was on the back of the moon provided. In order to be able to communicate with the probe at all, a relay satellite first had to be positioned behind the moon.

In the meantime a generation change had taken place at the manufacturer of the probes. Sun Zezhou , who joined the Chinese Academy of Space Technology in 1992 after completing his degree as an electrical engineer at the Nanjing Aviation Academy, had already participated in the in-house feasibility study for a lunar orbiter as part of chief engineer Ye Peijian's group since 2002. When CAST began developing a prototype in 2004, Sun Zezhou was appointed assistant chief engineer. At Chang'e-2 and Chang'e-3, he was the chief designer for all systems of the probes, and when the Academy of Space Technology officially started developing Chang'e-4 and the Martian probe Tianwen-1 in April 2016 , Sun became Zezhou named chief designer for both projects to succeed Ye Peijian. Ye Peijian, now 74 years old, still works for CAST in addition to his teaching activities and is now the chief scientist for space science and deep space exploration (as of 2019).

Landers and rovers of the Chang'e-4 mission were originally intended as a reserve for Chang'e-3, so they already existed and only had to be adapted to new payloads. The relay satellite, later called " Elsternbrücke ", was a new development based on the CAST 100 platform. The relay satellite was then manufactured by Dong Fang Hong Satellite GmbH ( 航天 东方 红 卫星 有限公司 , Hángtiān Dōngfāng Hóng Wèixīng Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī ), a subsidiary of CAST. The Elsternbrücke was launched from the Xichang Cosmodrome on May 21, 2018 , arrived at the moon on May 25 and, after a number of complicated orbit correction maneuvers, was parked in a halo orbit around the Lagrange point L 2 behind the moon on June 14, 2018 . The actual Chang'e-4 probe was then able to take off into space at the next but one launch window on December 7, 2018. On January 3, 2019, at 10 a.m. Beijing time, it landed as planned in the South Pole Aitken Basin on the far side of the moon . Five hours later, the Beijing Space Control Center gave the probe over the Elstern Bridge the instruction to launch the Rover Jadehase 2 , an identical model to that of the previous mission , only with slightly different payloads. At 10 o'clock in the evening Beijing time, the rover was then on the lunar surface and could begin exploring. As with Chang'e-3, it is primarily about the mineralogical composition of the lunar rock, the geological structure of the subsurface and, with measuring devices provided by Germany and Sweden, the investigation of radiation exposure at the South Pole.

Return (Chang'e 5-T1, 2014; Chang'e-5, 2020; Chang'e-6, 2023+)

In the third phase, based on the findings from the landing missions, a spacecraft was developed that can bring about 2 kg of lunar rock back to earth. First, however, the spacecraft for the return mission was tested with Chang'e 5-T1 . One of the main problems with the chosen fuel-efficient mission profile is that a probe returning from the moon from the Lagrange point L 1 , i.e. from an altitude of 326,000 km, falls unchecked to the earth and is accelerated by the gravity of the earth during the entire time until it is finally arrives at the bottom at 11.2 km / s, i.e. at more than 40,000 km / h. This makes it necessary, in a so-called "two-part descent" (English skip-glide ), to first brake the atmosphere through the friction on the air molecules in the thin layers of the high atmosphere , before the actual landing is initiated. Thanks to thorough preparation, this succeeded on November 1, 2014 with the test capsule launched a week earlier without any problems. After the return capsule was dropped, the "mother ship" returned to the moon 5000 km above the earth, where it was used by the Beijing Space Control Center to practice orbit maneuvers until April 2015 . Since then, Chang'e 5-T1's orbiter has been parked in lunar orbit (as of 2019).

It was originally planned that the actual return probe , Chang'e-5 , would land on the moon in late 2019 and bring a sample back to Earth. Then there were problems with the engine of the designated Changzheng 5 launcher , which postponed the launch to the end of October 2020 (as of July 20, 2020). At a later date, Chang'e-6 will land at the south pole of the moon and bring back soil samples from there. The question of whether to land on the near or far side of the South Pole will only be decided after the soil samples brought back by Chang'e-5 have been evaluated.

As with the landing phase, Chang'e-5 tried to minimize the risk of difficulties in adapting, etc., by relying on their own, long-proven technology. For Chang'e-6 Template: future / in 3 years, however, Liu Jizhong (刘继忠), the head of the Center for Lunar Exploration and Space Projects at the National Space Agency, invited Chinese universities and private companies as well as foreign research institutes to a ceremony in Beijing on April 18, 2019 to participate in the mission with payloads. On the Orbiter and Lander, 10 kg each are available for external partners. By way of comparison: the Chongqing University biosphere experiment that flew in the Chang'e-4 lander weighed 2.6 kg. In addition to representatives from numerous Chinese research institutes and universities, representatives from the embassies of the USA, Russia, Great Britain and Germany also took part in the ceremony. The French Center national d'études spatiales signed a letter of intent on March 25, 2019 in the presence of Presidents Emmanuel Macron and Xi Jinping with the National Agency for Science, Technology and Industry in the National Defense , according to which France a camera and an analysis device in Total weight of 15 kg with the Chang'e-6 mission.

Exploring the South Pole (Chang'e-7, 2024+)

The South Pole Aitken Basin. The purple oval denotes the inner ring, the black point in the lower part of the picture is the south pole.

Chang'e-7 is to carry out detailed studies of topography and soil composition near the south pole of the moon, on the so-called "inner ring" of the south pole Aitken basin . As with the Mars probe Tianwen-1 with a launch vehicle of the type is Changzheng-5 from Kosmodrom Wenchang launched probe carry its own orbiter, which is equipped with radar, a high-resolution stereo camera, an infrared camera, a magnetometer and a neutron and gamma-ray spectrometer , similar to the dosimeter of the University of Kiel on the Chang'e-4 lander . As of August 2020, Chang'e-7 is to carry out joint experiments with the Russian lunar orbiter Luna 26 , whose launch is also planned for 2024. In addition to a rover, the Chang'e-7 lander will also carry a small, airworthy sub-probe, which will land in a permanently shadowed area of ​​a crater next to the landing site of Chang'e-7, then take off again and on the sunny side of the To land in the crater. This small probe will carry an analyzer for water molecules and hydrogen isotopes as a payload in order to detect any water ice that has been brought in by comets.

When it comes to the practical use of such a discovery, people in China are skeptical. The National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences pointed out in January 2020 that because of the flat solar radiation at the polar regions, the days are not as hot as at the equator of the moon, so that the metal of machines expands less, and the metal of machines expands less Temperature difference between day and night are less prone to failure. On the other hand, cometary material such as water ice, carbon dioxide and methane only stays in permanently shaded places where one cannot work with solar cell-powered devices, from the problems of working in rugged terrain, the different forms of water in different depths (bound, chunks of ice, etc.) as well Not to mention the energy required to produce water by heating the soil and condensing the steam.

For the Chang'e-7 mission, a relay satellite similar to the Elsternbrücke at Chang'e-4 is used again, but this time it starts together with the probe, bringing its total weight to 8.2 t. The fuel, which the latter needs for the constant orbit corrections in its Halo orbit , is expected to be used up in 2023. With the aid of the relay satellite, radio astronomical observations and earth-moon long-base interferometry measurements are also to be carried out. A total of 23 scientific payloads will be used on this mission (for comparison: Tianwen-1, the most demanding mission of the Chinese space agency to date, carried 13 payloads). Similar to the biosphere experiment of Chongqing University on the land of Chang'e-4, the National Space Agency launched a competition for this mission, where elementary school students, high school and university students from the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau took place from July 29 to make suggestions for an interesting scientific payload by October 31, 2020. The development and construction of the payload is organized by the National Space Agency, the intellectual property belongs equally to the Chinese state and the competition winner (an individual or a group of up to six members).

For 17 of the payloads, the Center for Lunar Exploration and Space Projects hosted a public tender from August 26, 2020 , in which legal entities of the People's Republic of China, in accordance with the requirements set by the National Center for Space Science , submitted offers for development and Could submit construction of said payloads. Weight, power consumption, etc. were precisely defined. A minimum service life of 8 years was required for most of the payloads, 3 months for the analyzer on the small crater probe, and 2 years for an experimental communication laser on the orbiter. The Chinese companies and institutions were encouraged to look for domestic and foreign partners and to submit joint offers, whereby, according to the principle of joint ventures , the Chinese company always had to bear the responsibility.

Erection of buildings

The investigations carried out by Chang'e-7 will later be deepened by Chang'e-8. There are currently plans to use 3D printing to construct buildings for a scientific research station from lunar soil material. The focus laboratory for technologies for industrial production in space, which was set up in January 2018 under the umbrella of the Center for Projects and Technologies for the Use of Space of the Chinese Academy of Sciences , has been a group around the mechanical engineer and laboratory manager Wang Gong (王 功) , the spacecraft designer Liu Bingshan (刘兵 山) and the materials scientist Dou Rui (窦 睿) with the production of (initially only centimeter-sized) precision components from regolith . At the end of 2018, by mixing simulated moon dust with photopolymers and then using digital light processing , they succeeded in producing screws and nuts with a compressive strength of 428 MPa (porcelain has 500 MPa) and a flexural strength of 130 MPa (steel has more than 200 MPa). This technique is to be tested by Chang'e-8. The first tests were carried out in June 2018 on board the European parabolic aircraft A310 ZERO-G, in addition to 28 tests under the conditions of microgravity, twice under the gravity of Mars and twice under the gravity of the moon.

While in 2017 the Office for Manned Spaceflight was still thinking of a 100 kW nuclear reactor for the energy supply of the buildings, which was supposed to drive a magnetohydrodynamic generator with a strongly heated gas in a closed circuit , it was held in December 2018 in the then main development department of Chinese Academy of Space Technology for more realistic, during the lunar day using the electricity from solar cells to generate hydrogen in a thermochemical manner, to store it and then to use it in fuel cells together with oxygen to generate electricity during the lunar night . The preliminary planning for the latter approach is now financed by the Ministry of Science and Technology from the Fund for National Scientific and Technical Large-Scale Projects .

At the beginning of January 2020, Major General Chen Shanguang , Deputy Technical Director of the manned space program of the People's Republic of China , explained at an ergonomics conference that, for safety reasons, especially because of radiation protection, it is now assumed that the long-term occupied lunar base will be underground, with the components still are to be produced from regolith using 3D printing.

Future development

Wu Weiren , the technical director of the lunar program, said in a 2013 press conference on the occasion of the Chang'e 3 mission: “Comprehensive systems for probing the moon and Mars have been launched in our country. Each step is the basis for the next. In the moon project, for example, an unmanned mission will be followed by a manned one. It's a consistent process. With the successful missions of the lunar probes 'Chang'e 1' and 'Chang'e 2', we have already created the basis for probing Mars. There is no problem with that. "

In principle, there are two schools of thought among those responsible for the lunar program. One, led by Ouyang Ziyuan at the time , would like to advance the manned space program and set up a permanently manned lunar station. The slogan of this school is "Explore, Land, Live" (探 、 登 、 住). The other school, publicly represented by Ye Peijian , favors robots to deepen the scientific exploration of the moon and to develop and use mineral resources. Only at the end of this process should a lunar base be permanently manned by robots, which can also accommodate astronauts for short visits. The slogan of this school is "Explore, Use, Live" (探 、 用 、 住). Taking into account factors such as the expected speed of technical development, the available launch vehicles, long-term financial feasibility and a cost-benefit analysis, the 2015 China National Space Administration's center for lunar exploration and space projects came to the conclusion that the development of robots should first be promoted and only in the future, when the time was ripe, should a concrete program for manned moon landings be launched.

The European space agency ESA proposed an international "moon village" in March 2016, a proposal that was immediately taken up by China. On July 22nd, 2019, ESA, CNSA and Roskosmos finally launched an initiative for the construction of an international research station at the 4th International Conference on Lunar and Deep Space Exploration in Zhuhai, jointly organized by the National Space Agency and the Academy of Sciences of China . After extensive consultations, the three space agencies had already reached a consensus beforehand that they wanted to take on a joint pioneering role in planning an international research base on the moon. In a speech at the beginning of the conference, Peng Zhaoyu said that China had proposed to work with the other two space agencies on Chang'e-7 and Chang'e-8, which are scheduled to start in the mid to late 2020s, and thus jointly determine the feasibility a research station.

According to the state of the discussion at the time, the lunar base should support research on the origin and development of the moon, the environment on the lunar surface, the beginning and development of the universe and the evolution of the earth. As a first concrete step towards a lunar base, a coordination commission made up of government representatives from all participating countries should be set up. At the same time, scientists from the participating countries formed a joint research group for the precise definition of the scientific goals and a joint planning group of engineers for the technical implementation. Within two to three years, the three bodies should work out a detailed decision proposal for the construction of an international lunar base. Wu Weiren went on to explain in Zhuhai that Chang'e-7 and Chang'e-8 were used to assess the problems with a longer stay on the moon. While ESA initially stayed with informal discussions at working level, the project of the common lunar base at Roskosmos is being actively promoted by its director Dmitri Olegowitsch Rogozin . Talks between him and Zhang Kejian, the director of the National Space Agency of China, are planned for autumn 2020 to determine the specific size of the base and the research that will be carried out there.

The agency for manned spaceflight at the Department of Weapons Development of the Central Military Commission is actually only responsible for the construction and operation of a long-term manned space station in a near-earth orbit , according to the order given to it in 1992 . Since, in contrast to the National Space Agency, with the manned spacecraft of the new generation and the manned rocket of the new generation, which is under development, they have the means to transport people to the moon, this agency is increasingly used for the later phases of the lunar program. Already in April 2020, with the creation of the " Chinese Planetary Exploration " at the CNSA, a sharper separation of the organizational structures within the center for lunar exploration and space projects took place, in which the lunar program was decoupled from the remaining deep-space missions. At the International Symposium on Manned Spaceflight, planned for June 2021 in Hangzhou , it is now the Bureau for Manned Spaceflight that will discuss activities on the surface of the moon and its scientific exploration.

As of 2020, the first manned moon landing is planned for 2030, from 2035 a prototype of a moon base, initially manned by robots, is to be built at the south pole of the moon, where scientific research, raw material exploration and technology testing will be carried out.

Telemetry, tracking and control

The take-offs and flights of the probes are permanently monitored by the " TT&C system" (the acronym for "Telemetry, Tracking, and Command"), in this case by the Chinese deep space network , a joint venture between the military and Xi'an from the coordinated satellite control network with the civilian VLBI network of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, coordinated from Sheshan near Shanghai . The data received from there are forwarded to the Beijing Space Control Center of the People's Liberation Army, from where the manned space flights and deep-space missions of the People's Republic of China have been monitored and controlled with the aid of the high-speed computers available there since 1999. Until December 31, 2015, the military parts of the TT&C system, i.e. the center in Beijing as well as all tracking ships and ground stations subordinate to Xi'an at home and abroad were subordinate to the main witness office of the People's Liberation Army , which in turn is subordinate to the Central Military Commission , and since then the Strategic Combat Support Force of the People's Republic China . The Shanghai Astronomical Observatory acts in its capacity as operator of the VLBI observation base Sheshan (佘山 VLBI 观测 基地, Pinyin Shéshān VLBI Guāncè Jīdì ) as part of the lunar program for the military as spokesman for the civil radio observatories.

In contrast to the European ESTRACK system, for example , where each ground station has one or more transmitters and receivers, i.e. operates both uplink and downlink , there is a clear separation between the two directions of communication in the Chinese deep space network:

- Only the ground stations and tracking ships of the People's Liberation Army have transmitters and are authorized and able to send control signals to spacecraft.

- The telemetry signals from the probes are usually only received by the military stations and passed on to the Beijing Space Control Center.

- The data of the scientific payloads transmitted to earth by the probes are received exclusively by the VLBI network of the Academy of Sciences and then processed by the interested departments of the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences , university institutes, etc. The forwarding of data to foreign operators of payloads takes place via the center for lunar exploration and space projects of the national space agency of China .

Orbit tracking, on the other hand, is operated jointly by the military and the academy, especially during the critical start-up phase and the complicated orbit maneuvers near the moon. For this purpose, research institutes integrated into the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (中国 电子 科技 集团公司, Pinyin Zhōngguó Diànzǐ Kējì Jítuán Gōngsī ) but directly subordinate to the Electronic Warfare of the People's Liberation Army , the astronomical observatories in Kunming , Miyun near Beijing and Shanghai 2005/2006 ( Kunming and Miyun) and 2010–2012 (Shanghai) built large turnkey antennas in record time. By way of comparison: the groundbreaking ceremony for the 100 m telescope in Qitai , Xinjiang Province , took place in 2012, and so far (2019) the base has not even been erected. Since a signal sent from the moon is weakened by more than 20 times compared to the signal from a satellite in earth orbit, the antennas in Miyun, Kunming, Shanghai and Ürümqi become a 3000-kilometer VLBI- System interconnected, from the Chang'e-3 mission 2013 using the Delta-DOR procedure . In principle, the expansion of the TT&C system followed the three small steps of the probes themselves:

Orbiting phase

It was clear to all those involved from the start that the ground stations of the Chinese space control network (中国 航天 测控 网, Pinyin Zhōnggúo Hángtiān Cèkòngwǎng ) built from 1967 onwards for the control of communication and reconnaissance satellites in earth orbit, i.e. for a working range of a maximum of 80,000 km Lunar missions, where distances of up to 400,000 km have to be covered, would reach their limits. For cost reasons and because of the tight schedule, the lunar exploration project management group did not, at that time, approve the Xi'an satellite control center to build its own deep-space stations with large parabolic antennas. In the early 2000s, the ground stations of the People's Liberation Army had 18 m antennas and the Unified S-Band or S-band, developed by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the Apollo program and adapted by Chen Fangyun for the control of the Chinese satellites. USB technology in which telemetry, trajectory tracking and control are all run via a single system in the S-band . Measuring the distance and speed of a probe works with this technology over 400,000 km, but an angle measurement at this distance would result in an error of more than 100 km. Therefore, for the latter purpose, the VLBI network of civil radio observatories (中国 VLBI 网, Pinyin Zhōngguó VLBI Wǎng) was used, with which the astronomers of the Academy of Sciences can determine the position of radio sources in space with a precision of 0.02 angular seconds ( on the other hand, have problems with the exact distance measurement). By merging the USB data with the VLBI data in the Beijing Space Control Center, the position of the probes was able to be recorded both during the relatively slow transfer orbit and during the fast pivoting into an orbit around the moon, and then during the stable work phase in a polar lunar orbit can be determined with high precision.

In addition to the ground stations, the data transmission from the probes had also been optimized as much as possible. The orbiters in the orbit phase were based on the Dongfang Hong 3 communications satellite launched by the Chinese Academy of Space Technology in 1997. As a first step, the engineers there increased the transmitter power of the source satellite. A group led by Dr. Sun Dayuan (孙大媛, * 1972) developed a directional antenna that could be swiveled around two axes, i.e. moved in all directions, which always remained aligned with the earth, while the probe body constantly changed its alignment during the approach maneuvers and with the during the work phase in lunar orbit permanently mounted camera, spectrometers etc. was always aligned to the surface of the moon. In addition, the convolutional code technology was used for radio traffic to earth , which offers good protection against transmission losses in telemetry and payload data through forward error correction .

However, all of this was of no use if it was moon set in China and there was no longer any line of sight, i.e. for about 13 hours a day. Therefore, the National Space Agency had to rely on the help of ESA and its ESTRACK network, with which they had already successfully worked together on the Double Star mission. While the ground stations of the Chinese space control network have so far communicated with each other via the closed fiber optic network of the People's Liberation Army, it was necessary to open the channels to the outside for this - and for the cooperation with the VLBI network of the academy. The then still new Space Link Extension or SLE protocol of the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems was chosen for this purpose, based on the principle of “measuring station to center” and “center to center”. This means that , unlike radio astronomical joint ventures , the ESA ground stations in Maspalomas , Kourou and New Norcia did not communicate directly with the VLBI observation base Sheshan , but first with the European Space Control Center in Darmstadt , and then with the Beijing Space Control Center. The cooperation was successfully tested in several simulation exercises and in June 2006 during a real orbit tracking of the European lunar orbiter SMART-1 , and ESA then made an important contribution to the actual Chang'e-1 mission, not only in tracking and receiving telemetry Signals, but also when controlling the probe. On November 1, 2007 at 07:14 am CET , a foreign institution sent a command to a Chinese spacecraft for the first time in the history of Chinese space travel at the 15 m station in Maspalomas on the Canary Islands .

Landing phase

After the end of the Chang'e-1 mission in 2009, even before the second orbiter had taken off into space, there was a consensus among those responsible for the lunar program that it was necessary to set up a separate Chinese deep-space network for space purposes (中国 深 空 测控 网, Pinyin Zhōnggúo Shēnkōng Cèkòngwǎng ). The following principles were formulated for this purpose:

  • The planning must be realistic and long-term.
  • It must be possible to monitor and control flights to the moon (400,000 km) as well as to Mars (400,000,000 km).
  • TT&C, data transfer of scientific payloads and VLBI must be combined in one system.
  • It must be possible to address two different targets with a wave packet in order to simultaneously monitor and control a lander and a rover or a rendezvous maneuver between two missiles in lunar orbit.
  • The technology must be compatible with the technology used by NASA and ESA in deep space missions in order to facilitate future international cooperation and mutual support during missions.
  • The frequency bands on which the future deep space network will operate must cover the entire area that the International Telecommunication Union has allocated for lunar and deep space missions in order to be able to cope with several missions at the same time.
  • The data interfaces must meet the standards of the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems in order to be able to connect to foreign TT&C systems to form a network.
  • When designing the systems, use should be made of progressive technology at an international level as far as possible in order to promote the development of the domestic electronics and IT industry.
The TT&C network after completion of the military deep space stations (green).

As far as the geographic location of the deep-space stations to be erected was concerned, the theoretically best solution would have been to set up three stations around the earth, each 120 degrees apart, which would have ensured continuous tracking of the lunar and deep-space probes. In practice, the engineers had the easternmost and westernmost parts of the country at their disposal in the first expansion phase, which was limited to China itself; Because of the position of the probe tracks relative to the earth's equator and the technical possibilities of the antennas, a latitude between 30 ° and 45 ° had to be chosen. In order to be able to fulfill their task in deep-space missions, the receivers of the stations had to be very sensitive, which made them susceptible to electromagnetic interference from civilization facilities. A deep space station had to be as far away as possible from directional radio links , cellular base stations , high-voltage lines and electrified railway lines, also to avoid impairment of these infrastructure facilities by the high transmission power of a deep space station. In the end, the choice to locations fell into a large forest area 45 km southeast of Manchurian Giyamusi ( 46 ° 29 '37.1 "  N , 130 ° 46' 15.7"  O ) and km in the desert 130 south of Kashgar in Xinjiang ( 38 ° 25 '15.7 "  N , 76 ° 42' 52.6"  E ). This enabled lunar and deep space probes to be monitored for more than 14 hours a day. In addition, these stations fit perfectly into the existing VLBI network of the Academy of Sciences: the east-west baseline was greatly expanded, which improved the accuracy of the angle measurement.

The deep-space stations in Kashgar with a 35 m antenna and Giyamusi with a 66 m antenna, which were put into operation at the beginning of 2013, are high-tech, as required in the 2009 position paper. Each of the two stations has a waveguide- fed transceiver that can send and receive wave packets on several frequency bands (S and X, Kashgar also K a ). In addition, each station has an ultra narrow-band receiver for extremely weak signals, to cryogenic cooling to reduce the thermal noise for all recipients. The surface of the antenna dishes can be adjusted in real time using actuators , and there is an automatic correction of disturbances caused by gusts of wind. The technology is compatible with both the international CCSDS standards and the systems used in China. The latter enables the stations in Kashgar and Giyamusi, which are subordinate to the Xi'an Satellite Control Center of the People's Liberation Army, to communicate directly and above all quickly with the stations of the civil network using the eVLBI software developed by the Science and Technology Department of Radio Astronomy of the Shanghai Observatory and to form the interferometry baselines drawn on the map as required.

The construction of the Kashgar and Giyamusi deep space stations had expanded the area of ​​the sky covered by the Chinese TT&C system, but it was still only at 60%. For example, during the critical start-up phase of the Chang'e 3 mission, one was again dependent on the help of the European Space Agency. It had long been planned to set up a third deep space station on the opposite side of the earth from China. As early as 2010, the General Command for Satellite Starts, Orbit Tracking and Control (中国 卫星 发射 测控 系统 部), which was the head office of the Xi'an satellite control center, and which was then subordinate to the Central Office of the People's Liberation Army, asked the Argentine Commission for Space Activities whether it would be possible to set up a ground station there to build. After extensive discussion and visits to several of the planned locations, the choice fell on a location in the province of Neuquén on the northern edge of Patagonia . On April 23, 2014, Julio de Vido, the Argentine Minister for Planning, State Investment and Services, and the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi signed a cooperation agreement in Buenos Aires that gave China the rights to use a 200-hectare area about 75 km north for 50 years granted to the city of Zapala ( 38 ° 11 ′ 27.3 ″  S , 70 ° 8 ′ 59.6 ″  W ). In February 2015 the treaty was ratified by the Argentine National Congress. Soon afterwards the official start of construction (the earthworks had already started in December 2013). In February 2017, the construction work was largely completed, in April 2018 the deep space station (Spanish estación del espacio lejano ) was officially put into operation, and when Chang'e-4 started on December 7, 2018 at 3:23 pm Argentinian time, Zapala was able to join replace the ESA completely with its 35 m antenna.

Return phase

With the commissioning of the Zapala deep space station, one was already well prepared for the third of the three small steps, where soil samples are to be taken on the moon and brought to the orbiter by a transport capsule. During the working phase on the lunar surface, an uninterrupted and absolutely reliable localization and remote control of all components is necessary. With Zapala a coverage rate of the Chinese TT&C system of 90% was achieved; only when the moon is over the Pacific is there an observation gap of about 2.5 hours. In order to be able to determine the exact position of the spacecraft involved during the difficult rendezvous maneuver between the orbiter and the transport capsule rising from the lunar surface, the Swakopmund ground station in Namibia, which was previously only used during manned missions in earth orbit, was additionally equipped with the two 5 m parabolic antennas and 9 m in diameter or a 18-m-antenna with a S / X-dual band transceiver and a VLBI data acquisition - terminal built ( 22 ° 34 '28.9 "  S , 14 ° 32' 54.4"  O ).

Tracking stations deployed on the return of a lunar probe

Since the return capsule is brought back from the moon by the orbiter at more than 40,000 km / h, its speed must first be reduced by means of atmospheric braking over Africa. The capsule then bounces back up like a stone thrown at a flat angle over a body of water (hence the English term skip-glide ) to pass over Pakistan and Tibet to the final approach to Dörbed in Inner Mongolia . In order to monitor this so-called "two-part descent", the tracking ship Yuan Wang 3 is stationed east of Somalia . In addition, the Karachi ground station and the observatory in Sênggê Zangbo , western Tibet , were each equipped with a beacon system and a mobile multi-beam remote monitoring and control device. An X-band radar station with a phased array antenna was built in Qakilik County , Xinjiang Autonomous Region .

In order to ensure that the spacecraft reaches the correct orbit in order to be able to detach the return capsule at exactly the right point over the South Atlantic, the distance of the spacecraft from the earth in a kind of relay run from the stations in Zapala during the last phase of the return flight , Swakopmund and the ESTRACK station Maspalomas are constantly measured. The data obtained in this way are then used by the Beijing Space Control Center to precisely calculate the flight path required to reach the re-entry corridor.

Ground segment

In China, the maintenance of the probes themselves, the engines for propulsion and attitude control, the power supply and telemetry, are relatively strictly separated from the scientific payloads. The military is responsible for the former, i.e. the Xi'an Satellite Control Center and the Beijing Space Control Center ; for the latter, on the occasion of the Chang'e-1 mission in the headquarters of the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, Datun-Str. 20a, set up its own ground segment (地面 应用 系统). The two newly built antennas in Miyun (50 m) and Kunming (40 m) were permanently assigned to the headquarters in Beijing in order to receive the payload data from the lunar probes with them. In addition, these two antennas also function as part of the VLBI network for trajectory monitoring and can also be used for radio astronomical purposes when there is no line of sight to the moon, but their function in the downlink from the probes has priority.

In addition to storing, backing up , archiving and publishing the received payload data, the Beijing headquarters of the ground segment created the option of further processing the raw data from the very beginning, for example creating lunar maps from photos and radar data. The ground segment is also responsible for controlling the payloads. Since the antennas of the Academy of Sciences have no transmitters, the researchers in Beijing write command lines that they transmit to the Xi'an satellite control center, which in turn sends the commands to the probes via its deep-space stations. For the 2013 Chang'e 3 mission, a separate remote sensing laboratory was set up in the headquarters of the ground segment (遥 科学 实验室, not to be confused with the National Focus Laboratory for Remote Sensing, which went into operation in 2005, or 遥感 科学 国家 重点 实验室 next door in Datun -Str.20a North). There the scientific payloads can be tested and their control practiced.

For the Chang'e-5 mission, which is supposed to bring soil samples back from the moon, was in Datun St. A further laboratory was set up in 20a, where the samples can be examined and stored (月球 样品 存储 dazu), and an additional laboratory for long-term ex situ storage of the soil samples in an external location that complies with disaster control regulations . Since the Chang'e-5 lander has two devices for on-site analysis of the lunar soil in addition to the usual cameras, there is heavy traffic on this mission. Therefore, in addition to the existing 50 m telescope, another parabolic antenna with a 40 m diameter was built in Miyun to handle the data traffic from this and the subsequent missions.

organization structure

The institutions involved in the lunar program have been organized as follows since April 24, 2020:

Please note:
The formal legal director of the lunar program and the person responsible for the National People's Congress is the Prime Minister (since March 15, 2013 Li Keqiang ). In fact, however, all threads come together at the lunar exploration project leadership group ( 月球 探測 工程 領導 小組  /  月球 探测 工程 领导 小组 , Yuèqiú Tàncè Gōngchéng Lǐngdǎo Xiǎozǔ ), which has been chaired by Qiufa ( 陳 求 發  /  陈 求 发 , * 1954), since March 21, 2008 .

Web links

Commons : Lunar Program of the People's Republic of China  - collection of images, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

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  130. ↑ Since its inception in 1957, Chinese space travel has been subordinate to the Prime Minister . While Zhou Enlai personally took care of details such as the food deliveries for the cosmodrome staff, later incumbents mostly limited themselves to the appointment of top staff and occasional inspections ( 考察 , kǎochá ) of the individual departments.