Long March 5 rocket arrives for Chang'e 7 lunar mission

The Long March 5 carrier rocket, designated to launch the Chang'e 7 robotic lunar probe, has been transported to the Wenchang Space Launch Site in South China's Hainan province, according to the China Manned Space Agency.

The agency stated in a brief news release that components of the rocket arrived at the coastal spaceport on Monday. The launch vehicle will be assembled and undergo functional tests with the Chang'e 7 probe at the site.

According to the release, systems involved in the mission have been preparing for the upcoming lunar expedition as scheduled.

Built by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, the Long March 5 is China's largest and most powerful operating rocket model. With a liftoff weight of 877 metric tons, the rocket can transport spacecraft weighing up to 25 tons — the combined weight of 16 mid-size cars — to a low-Earth orbit, or 14 tons to a geosynchronous transfer orbit. It can also carry an eight-ton probe to the Earth-moon transfer orbit or a five-ton probe to the Earth-Mars transfer orbit.

As previously published by mission planners, the Chang'e 7 probe includes an orbiter, a lander, a rover, and a small flying probe designed to hop into pits on the lunar surface to search for ice.

The Chinese craft will carry six science payloads built by international scientists, including the Laser Retroreflector Arrays from the National Laboratory of Frascati under Italy's National Institute for Nuclear Physics; the Lunar Dust and Electric Field Instrument from the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences; and the International Lunar-based Telescope from the International Lunar Observatory Association.

To date, China has conducted six robotic missions to explore the moon.