WENCHANG (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th November, 2020) China's Chang'e 5 lunar sample return mission will last 23 days and will include a dozen different stages, Pei Zhaoyu, a spokesperson of the Chang'e 5 mission, said.
Earlier, a Sputnik correspondent reported that the Chang'e 5 lunar mission was successfully launched from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Center in Wenchang, in China's Hainan island province, using the Chinese heavy-lift launch vehicle Chang Zheng 5 (Long March 5). The launch took place at 04:30 local time on Tuesday (20:30 GMT on Monday).
Pei Zhaoyu, deputy director of the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration (CNSA) told journalists that "the total implementation period for this mission is about 23 days."
According to CNSA, the Chang Zheng 5 rocket successfully put the Chang'e 5 lunar research vehicle into the designated orbit about 2,200 seconds after the launch.
According to Pei Zhaoyu, the Chang'e 5 lunar mission will consist of 12 different stages. It will take the vehicle 4.5 days to fly to the Moon and it is expected to land on the Moon's surface about eight days after the launch.
"I believe that the biggest challenge in the current mission will be the actual work on soil sampling, takeoff from the lunar surface, approach and docking in lunar orbit and the vehicle's return to Earth," the CNSA spokesperson told journalists.
The Chang'e 5 lunar mission is China's first-ever sample return mission. If fully successful, it will become the first lunar sample return mission to be completed since 1976, when the Soviet Union carried out the Luna 24 robotic probe mission to the Moon.
