China has launched and experimental unmanned spacecraft to moon and back to earth, the spacecraft launched form Southwestern Xinchang satellite launch center and the spacecraft will fly around the moon orbit for eight days.
The eight day program is a test run for up coming Chinese spacecraft program to land on 2017 mission and the spacecraft will retrieve samples from moon to earth. If china has manages to bring sample from moon, then they are the third nation to carry out after US and Russia.
Xinhua said the latest mission is to “obtain experimental data and validate re-entry technologies such as guidance, navigation and control, heat shield and trajectory design” for the future moon-lander chang’e 5.
China’s lunar exploration program, named chang’e after a mythical goddess, has already launched a pair of orbiting lunar probes and last year landed a craft on the moon with a rover on-board. None of those mission were programmed to return to Earth.
It will return to earth using a Soviet-designed method in which it will first bounce off Earth’s atmosphere in order to slow it down to allow it to enter the atmosphere without burning up.
