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Tuesday, October 5, 2010

China's Chang'E-2 in Lunar Orbit


Chang'E-2 was captured by the lunar gravity fields after five days of spaceflight. The Chinese space probe has become as lunar orbiter at 11:40, 6th Oct (Beijing local time), according to Yong-Chun Zheng of the National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The first braking of Chang'E-2 lunar orbiter was made at at 11:06, 6th Oct (Beijing local time). The braking was successful. After the 30 minutes' braking, Chang'E-2 was captured by the lunar gravity and become as a lunar orbiter. Chang'E-2 was entered into the circumlunar trajectory with the orbit of 100km × 8000 km. The orbital period of the trajectory is 12 hours. In the future, Chang'E-2 will make the other braking action and enter its 100km ×15 km target trajectory.

In a breaking Space Daily story, the Chinese are said to be planning multiple moon rover landers and sample return missions through Chang'E-5 and Chang'E-6, dependent upon the successful development of a new Long March 5 rocket booster.

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