China showcases lunar exploration achievements at Basel show

An exhibit focusing on China’s Lunar Exploration Program (CLEP) began Saturday in the Swiss city of Basel, highlighting some of the magnificent achievements of China’s aerospace industry.

Since 2004, when the CLEP officially started, China has made significant progress in the exploration of the moon, Xu Xingli, general manager of Chang’e Aerospace Technology (Beijing) LLC, said at the opening ceremony of the exhibit.

“In 2007, China’s first lunar probe Chang’e-1 was successfully launched. Chang’e-1 is the first lunar probe to transmit back the most complete 3-D map of the lunar surface, making China one of the countries capable of outer space exploration,” he said.

“Since the second phase of the CLEP was approved and initiated in 2008, Chang’e-2 and Chang’e-3 lunar probes were successfully launched and completed their missions,” he added.

Xu said China’s progress in the past decade also includes sending the CE-2 lunar probe directly into the Earth-moon transfer orbit in 2010, the soft landing and patrol survey on an extraterrestrial celestial body by CE-3 in 2013, and the successful landing of the return and re-entry test spacecraft in the scheduled area in 2014.

“CLEP represents the painstaking efforts of everyone involved for over a decade. China plans to implement the Chang’e-4 lunar mission this year, and will be the first-ever soft landing and roving survey on the far side of the moon,” Zuo Wei, deputy chief designer of the CLEP Ground Application System, said.

According to the scientist, the biggest challenge for the CE-4 mission is getting humans on Earth to communicate directly with the far side of the moon.

To solve this problem, she said, China plans to launch a relay satellite in May 2018 to enable communication between the Earth and the far side of the moon.

The Chinese scientist also revealed that the CE-5 will be launched in 2019 and will be the first in the world to use the unmanned lunar orbital rendezvous and docking mode to achieve lunar surface sampling return.