“China’s Chang’e space program: Exploring the Moon’s South Pole and 3D Printing with Lunar Materials”

Beijing, Bolong.id – Chinese scientists will carry out exploration missions on the moon with the Chang’e 8 Satellite. Among other things, printing with 3D technology there.

Reported from China Daily (24/04/2023) Wu Weiren, an academic from the Chinese Academy of Engineering said, the Chang’e 8 (3rd) probe robot will be placed on the moon.

Precisely at the South Pole of the moon to carry out environmental investigations and mineral composition at the landing site.

Also checking, whether some advanced technologies, 3D printing for example, can be done on the surface of the moon using lunar materials in the future.

“If we want to stay on the moon for a long time, we need to build stations using lunar materials ourselves,” he said in a recent interview, ahead of China Space Day which falls on Monday.

“Moon soil will be our raw material and will be molded into construction units. Professors at several domestic universities, such as Tongji University in Shanghai and Xi’an Jiaotong University in Shaanxi province, have started to study the possibility of applying 3D printing technology to the moon,” he said.

China has a big roadmap for an exploration and development program in our nearest neighbor in the coming years, said the chief planner.

The next step in China’s lunar adventure — the robotic mission Chang’e 6 — is set to land on the far side of the moon from where it will bring back soil and rock samples. Chang’e 5 has taken samples from the near side of the moon. “If Chang’e 6 is successful, it will be the first time we get samples from the far side of the moon,” said Wu.

The Chang’e 6 probe consists of four components — the orbiter, lander, ascender, and reentry module — and is slated for launch around 2025.

Earth’s gravity creates tidal friction which slows the moon’s rotation. Over time, the same face of the moon becomes tidally locked, forever pointed toward the planet. This is the close side.

The other side, or the far side, has been photographed heavily from various spacecraft, starting with the Soviet space probe in 1959, but no probe landed on its surface until January 2019 when China’s Chang’e 4 mission gently touched down on Von Karman. crater.

The Chang’e 4 lander and rover has been working on the moon for more than four years and continues to allow scientists to observe closely and survey the far side.

After Chang’e 6, the Chang’e 7 probe robot will be sent to land at the lunar South Pole to carry out a “high-precision probe”, Wu said.

“The Chang’e 7 mission is intended to search for traces of water in the South Pole, investigate the environment and weather there, and survey the landform. The vehicle will carry a ‘flyby craft’ whose job is to fly to a hole in the moon’s surface. to find ice,” said the scientist.

“Chang’e 7 will also be tasked with detecting natural resources beneath the surface of the South Pole Moon. Mission planners are trying to assess whether we can use the probe to excavate the surface and study the underground structure and composition,” he said.

In the long term, scientists will use components from the three upcoming missions – orbiter, lander, rover and sensor – to form a prototype robotic scientific outpost, which will act as a platform for international collaboration on lunar exploration, he added.