The China National Space Administration (CNSA) is offering opportunities for international cooperation on payloads that will piggyback on the country’s Chang’e-8 lunar exploration mission, slated for launch around 2028. <\/p>\n
The Chang’e-8 mission is open to all countries and international organizations for collaboration at either mission, system or single-machine levels in order to encourage more major original discoveries, according to a CNSA release on Monday. <\/p>\n
The CNSA also announced the bid invitation at the ongoing International Astronautical Congress held in Baku, Azerbaijan. <\/p>\n
The Chang’e-8 mission, a key task in the fourth stage of China’s lunar probe, will carry out more lunar geological detection and research, lunar-based observations of Earth, lunar in-situ sampling analysis and resource use, as well as a small, closed terrestrial ecosystem experiment on the moon’s surface, according to the CNSA. <\/p>\n
Preference will be given to international cooperation bids at mission level involving a collaborative probe and interaction between two spacecraft. <\/p>\n
Also, the joint development of lunar robots capable of basic operations on the moon’s surface, and other complementary science payloads and highly innovative science projects are preferred. <\/p>\n
The lander of the Chang’e-8 probe will provide a 200-kg payload resource, but any standalone module for collaboration on system and single-machine levels must be less than 100 kg. <\/p>\n
The deadline for submission of Chang’e-8 proposals for international cooperation is Dec. 31, 2023. The preliminary and final selections will be completed by April and September next year, respectively, as planned. <\/p>\n
The Chang’e-8 will constitute, together with Chang’e-7, the basic model of a lunar research station. The Chang’e-7 probe is expected to be sent into space around 2026 to implement resource exploration of the lunar south pole. <\/p>\n
China will, meanwhile, send the Chang’e-6 to the moon around 2024 to collect samples from its far side as planned, carrying payloads from France, Italy, Pakistan and the European Space Agency, which include a negative ion detector and a radon gas detector. <\/p>\n
The Chang’e-5, launched in 2020, was the country’s most recent mission to the moon. Its probe retrieved a total of 1,731 grams of lunar soil from the near side. <\/p>\n
During its current congress in Baku, the International Academy of Astronautics awarded the 2023 Laurels for Team Achievement to the Chang’e-5 team. The team’s chief designer Hu Hao announced there that the lunar soil samples will also soon be open for international applications in investigations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) is offering opportunities for international cooperation on payloads that will piggyback on the country’s Chang’e-8 lunar exploration mission, slated for launch around 2028. The Chang’e-8 mission is open to all countries and international organizations for collaboration at either mission, system or single-machine levels in order to encourage more major […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3316"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}