A decommissioned launch facility at Cape Canaveral where some of America’s first interplanetary missions left Earth will now be used as a test site for a commercial moon lander.
A Chinese spacecraft launched in October has settled into a circular orbit around the moon for rendezvous simulations and reconnaissance to prepare for a planned lunar sample return mission, according to state media reports.
Scientists hope private backers will kick-start a mission to land a robotic probe on the South Pole of the moon within the next 10 years, drill deep into lunar bedrock and analyze primordial core samples to study the origins of the solar system.
Completing an eight-day test flight around the moon to verify technologies for a planned lunar sample return mission, an unpiloted Chinese space capsule re-entered Earth’s atmosphere at blazing speed and parachuted to a successful landing.
A modest privately-funded instrument package built by a company in Luxembourg became the first commercial to the moon to get off the ground with a fiery nighttime launch aboard a Chinese rocket.
China launched a demonstrator probe on a round-trip flight around the moon to test out a heat shield and landing capsule planned for use on a lunar sample return mission in 2017.