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 (US$133 million to 187 million) 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.
(Xinhua News Agency October 25, 2007)