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fullscreen Samples from China’s last lunar expedition, Chang’e 5, on display at the National Museum in Beijing. Now the country is investing in repeating the bravado, with continued research in place. The picture is from 2021. Photo: Ng Han Guan/AP/TT
The US’s latest attempt has barely failed until the next lunar lander is rolled out, now in China.
The Chang’e-6 probe is in place on Hainan in southern China, and will be sent into space in a few months, state media reports.
This week’s announcement from China that Chang’e-6 will now begin on-site testing, before departure from the southern space base, means that the superpowers’ space race is intensifying again.
As recently as Monday, the United States sent up a lunar probe, called Peregrine. It took off as it was supposed to, but once in space it both ran out of fuel and failed to angle its solar panels correctly. The operator Astrobotic, which carries out the venture on behalf of the space agency Nasa, has now given up hope that Peregrine will be able to soft land on the moon.
Already in February, however, the United States makes another attempt, in the form of the company Intuitive Machine’s probe Nova-C.
At the very forefront of what looks set to be an intense year for lunar research, however, is Japan, whose probe has been on its way since September and is due to land in just a week or so. The project is called Slim (Smart lander for investigating moon) or Moon sniper in English, and if it succeeds, Japan will be the fifth country to land a craft on the moon, after the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India.
So far, all ongoing expeditions are unmanned. But both the US and China plan to send astronauts to the moon later this decade.
No man has been on the moon since the US Apollo program in 1968 to 1972.