Chang'e 5-T1 () was an experimental

robotic spacecraft A robotic spacecraft is an uncrewed spacecraft, usually under telerobotic control. A robotic spacecraft designed to make scientific research measurements is often called a space probe. Many space missions are more suited to telerobotic rather t ...

that was launched to the Moon on 23 October 2014 by the

China National Space Administration China National Space Administration (CNSA; ) is the government agency of the People's Republic of China that is responsible for civil space administration and international space cooperation, including organizing or leading foreign exchanges ...

(CNSA) to conduct atmospheric re-entry tests on the capsule design planned to be used in the Chang'e 5 mission. As part of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, Chang'e 5, launched in 2020, was a Moon sample return mission. Like its predecessors, the spacecraft is named after the Chinese Moon goddess

Chang'e Chang'e ( ; , alternatively rendered as Chang-Er or Ch‘ang-o), originally known as Heng'e, is the Chinese goddess of the Moon. She is the subject of several legends in Chinese mythology, most of which incorporate several of the following elem ...

. The craft consisted of a return vehicle capsule and a service module orbiter. The return capsule of Chang'e 5-T1, named ''Xiaofei'' () meaning "little flyer" in Chinese, landed in

Siziwang Banner Dorbod (Siziwang) Banner ( mn, , , ; ) is a banner (county equivalent) in Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia, China, bordering Mongolia's Dornogovi Province to the northwest. It is located about north of Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia. The banner ...

, Inner Mongolia on 31 October 2014, 22:42 UTC. The CE-5-T1 Service Module entered lunar orbit on 13 January 2015. Its initial orbit was 200 x 5,300 km with period of 8 hours.

Characteristics

It consisted of a DFH-3A " Chang'e 2 type" spacecraft with a mass of approximately 2,215 kg (including 1,065 kg of fuel) carrying the Chang'e 5 return capsule with a mass of under 335 kg. The craft was launched by a

Long March 3C The Long March 3C (), also known as the Changzheng 3C, CZ-3C and LM-3C, is a Chinese orbital launch vehicle. It is launched from Launch Complex 2 and 3 at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center (XSLC). A three-stage rocket with two strapon liquid ...

rocket into a lunar free return trajectory. It looped behind the Moon and returned to Earth, with the return capsule testing the high speed atmospheric

skip reentry Non-ballistic atmospheric entry is a class of atmospheric entry trajectories that follow a non-ballistic trajectory by employing aerodynamic lift in the high upper atmosphere. It includes trajectories such as skip and glide. Skip is a flight tr ...

. The DFH-3A "service module" remained in orbit around the Earth before being relocated via Earth-Moon L₂ to lunar

Lissajous orbit In orbital mechanics, a Lissajous orbit (), named after Jules Antoine Lissajous, is a quasi-periodic orbital trajectory that an object can follow around a Lagrangian point of a three-body system without requiring any propulsion. Lyapunov orbits ...

by 13 January 2015, where it will use its remaining 800 kg of fuel to test maneuvers key to future lunar missions. In February and March 2015 the DFH-3A "service module" performed two "virtual target" rendezvous tests for the future Chang'e 5 mission. In April 2015 the small monitoring camera was used to obtain higher resolution photos of Chang'e 5's landing zone.

Mission profile

Main Mission

*Launch: Xichang Satellite Launch Center, 23 October 2014, 18:00 UTC *Nominal mission duration: Chang'e 5 return capsule: 196 hours (8.17 days) *Nominal mission duration: DFH-3A: Ongoing *Lunar fly-by: 97 hours after final orbit insertion (4.04 days) *Periselenium: ≈13,000 km from Moon surface *Distance of Moon from Earth at closest fly-by: ≈373,000 km *Landing:

, Inner Mongolia, 31 October 2014, 22:42 UTC

Lunar Orbiter

In January 2015, the service module transitioned to lunar orbit, orbiting at 200x5300 km. It was still active in early 2018 and was last heard by amateurs radio-astronomers in late 2020. Hertzsprung (LRO)

Third stage disposal

The

third stage booster, left in orbit between the Earth and the Moon, was predicted to hit, and did hit, the Moon on March 4, 2022, impacting near the Hertzsprung crater. Independent spectral analysis from the University of Arizona confirmed its Chinese origin. NASA has published a note on the event. China's foreign ministry has denied this identification, stating that the booster had already burned up in the Earth's atmosphere. The

US Space Command United States Space Command (USSPACECOM or SPACECOM) is a unified combatant command of the United States Department of Defense, responsible for military operations in outer space, specifically all operations 100 kilometers (62 miles) and grea ...

confirmed the third stage never reentered in Earth's atmosphere, and a compatible item is now present on the Space-Track catalogue as object 85900. The impactor object was previously misidentified as 2015-007B, the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket which launched NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft, but was later correctly identified as the Long March stage in February 2022. The event showed how hard it is to track small objects in deep space. In June 2022, a compatible double crater was found by the

LROC LRoc (born James Elbert Phillips) is an American in-house songwriter and producer at Jermaine Dupri's So So Def Recordings. He has co-written and co-produced singles like Janet Jackson's " Call on Me", Monica's " Everytime Tha Beat Drop", M ...

team at the same location previously estimated.

Secondary payloads

Chang'e 5-T1 also carries the first commercial payload to the Moon called the 4M mission (Manfred Memorial Moon Mission) for the German space technology company

OHB System OHB SE is a European multinational technology corporation. Headquartered in Bremen, Germany, the corporation consists of the two business divisions Space Systems and Aerospace + Industrial Products. A key product of the corporation is fully int ...

, in honor of the company's founder, Manfred Fuchs, who died in 2014. Technical management of the 4M mission was performed by LuxSpace. The payload weighs 14 kilograms and contains two scientific instruments. The first instrument is a

radio beacon In navigation, a radio beacon or radiobeacon is a kind of beacon, a device that marks a fixed location and allows direction-finding equipment to find relative bearing. But instead of employing visible light, radio beacons transmit electromagnet ...

to test a new approach for locating spacecraft. Amateur radio operators were encouraged via prize incentives to receive the transmissions and send results back to LuxSpace. The second instrument, a radiation dosimeter provided by the Spanish company iC-Málaga, continuously measured

radiation In physics, radiation is the emission or transmission of energy in the form of waves or particles through space or through a material medium. This includes: * ''electromagnetic radiation'', such as radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visi ...

levels throughout the satellite's circumlunar path. The spacecraft also carries a radiation exposure experiment with bacteria and plants.

References

External links

Manfred Memorial Moon Mission (4M)
– Official website for secondary payload at Chang'e 5-T1
Pocket Spacecraft – Space exploration for everyone
– Official website for another secondary payload at Chang'e 5-T1 {{DEFAULTSORT:Chang'e 5 2014 in China Chinese Lunar Exploration Program Chinese space probes Missions to the Moon Space probes launched in 2014 Spacecraft launched by Long March rockets