The Chinese spacecraft Chang'e-5 took a long retrograde circumlunar orbit
The Chinese spacecraft Chang'e-5 took a long retrograde circumlunar orbit earlier than the Orion spacecraft of the American Artemis 1 mission turned out to be, SpaceNews writes .
It is noted that Chang'e-5 orbits the moon once every two weeks in a distant retrograde orbit. "Such an orbit has not been used before, but it is planned to be used in the upcoming NASA Artemis 1 mission later this year," the publication says.
According to expert Jonathan McDowell, in this way China is gaining experience in the field of astrodynamics. According to him, after the completion of the main mission, Chang'e-5 is used "as a toy".
In November 2020, a Long March-5 heavy rocket with the Chang'e-5 mission was launched in China from the Wenchang Cosmodrome, during which samples of lunar soil were delivered to Earth within a month. The last successful delivery of soil from the surface of the Moon was carried out in the 1970s by the USSR and the USA.
In January 2019, the Chinese National Space Administration released a video of the world's first soft landing on the far side of the moon. The lander with the 140-kilogram lunar rover of the Chang'e 4 mission made a soft landing in the South Pole—Aitken basin on January 3. Before that, no country in the world had landed on the far side of the moon.
