Sentences with phrase «lunar samples returned»
«I do not believe that the Chang» e lunar sample return mission will launch this year, as originally planned,» said Dr Jones.
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China also characterized it as a final test of the new rocket before November's scheduled launch of the Chang» e-5 lunar sample return mission.
Not exact matches
Its next moon mission: to return a lunar soil sample in 2017; if it succeeds, it will be the first collected since the last Apollo missions in the 1970s.
Astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft launched on the Space Launch System (SLS) would rendezvous with the captured asteroid mass in lunar orbit and collect samples for return to Earth.
Its lunar exploration program is also increasingly science - driven, with a sample return mission scheduled for next year and the first ever landing on the far side of the moon planned for 2018.
The prospect of samples being returned by Chang» e-5 next year — more than four decades since the last ones were snagged by the Soviet Union's Luna 24 in 1976 — is tremendously exciting for lunar science, says Ian Crawford, a professor of planetary science and astrobiology at Birkbeck College in London.
And a mission to return a sample from the moon's largest impact crater would have been some comfort to lunar scientists still smarting from Obama's decision to redirect NASA's crewed space exploration from the moon to near - Earth asteroids.
«NASA has been experiencing loss of astromaterials since lunar samples were first returned by Apollo missions,» inspector general Paul K. Martin detailed in the report.
The development of ever more sensitive microscopy and chemical - analysis techniques will continue to produce new insights from existing samples into the foreseeable future — good news, considering that no nation appears to be close to returning humans to the lunar surface.
China will attempt to land the Chang» e 3 rover on the moon at year's end, the first lunar surface mission since Russia's Luna 24 sample return lander in 1976.
Two years after placing its very first rover on the surface of the moon, China has announced it would launch a mission to return lunar samples to Earth later this year.