Chinese lunar mission set for Tuesday morning launch

Chang'e 5, the most sophisticated mission in China's lunar exploration program, will be launched from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province early Tuesday morning, the China National Space Administration announced on Monday.

It said the Long March 5 heavy-lift carrier rocket that will carry the robotic probe started to be injected with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellants at its launchpad around 6:30 pm Monday.

The launch is scheduled for between 4 am and 5 am.

The sixth mission in the Chang'e program, Chang'e 5 will be one of the most difficult and challenging space endeavors China has ever embarked on and aims to be the first mission by any nation in more than four decades to bring lunar samples back to Earth.

Studying the samples will help scientists researching the moon's origin and evolution, the administration said.

If the Chang'e 5 mission succeeds it will make China the third nation in the world to bring lunar samples back to Earth after the United States and the former Soviet Union.

The last time a spacecraft returned to Earth with lunar samples was in August 1976, when the former Soviet Union's unmanned Luna 24 brought back 170.1 grams of samples.

The Long March 5 rocket to be used on Tuesday was transported to a port in Wenchang by ships in late September and then carried by special trucks to the launch center. It has been assembled and examined at the center over the past two months.

China's first lunar probe — Chang'e 1 — was launched in October 2007. Since then, the country has launched four lunar exploration spacecraft.

The ongoing Chang'e 4 mission, launched in December 2018, was the first endeavor by any nation to conduct surface observations on the far side of the moon, which never faces Earth. The success of that mission achieved a goal sought by scientists for decades.