The return capsule of Chang'e 5-T1, namedXiaofei (Chinese:小飞), meaning "little flyer" in Chinese, landed inSiziwang Banner,Inner Mongolia, on 31 October 2014, 22:42 UTC. The CE-5-T1 Service Module entered lunar orbit on 13 January 2015.[11] Its initial orbit was 200 x 5,300 km with a period of 8 hours.
It consisted of a DFH-3A "Chang'e 2 type" spacecraft with a mass of approximately 2,215 kg (including 1,065 kg of fuel)[12] carrying the Chang'e 5 return capsule with a mass of under 335 kg.[13] The craft was launched by aLong March 3C rocket into a lunarfree return trajectory. It looped behind the Moon and returned to Earth, with the return capsule testing the high speed atmosphericskip reentry.
The DFH-3A "service module" remained in orbit around the Earth before being relocated viaEarth-Moon L2 to lunarLissajous orbit by 13 January 2015, where it will use its remaining 800 kg of fuel to test maneuvers key to future lunar missions.[14]
In February and March 2015, the DFH-3A "service module" performed two "virtual target" rendezvous tests for the futureChang'e 5 mission. In April 2015, the small monitoring camera was used to obtain higher resolution photos of Chang'e 5's landing zone.
In January 2015, the service module transitioned to lunar orbit, orbiting at 200x5300 km. It was still active in early 2018[1] and was last heard by amateur radio-astronomers in late 2020.[5]
Animation of Chang'e 5-T1 booster's impact on the Moon on March 4, 2022 Chang'e 5-T1 booster· Earth· MoonLunar impact craters of the third-stage booster from China's Chang'e 5-T1.The impact position for the booster was at latitude 5.18 N, longitude 233.55 E.[18][19][20]
TheLong March 3C third stage booster, left in orbit between the Earth and the Moon, was predicted to hit, and did hit, the Moon on March 4, 2022, impacting near theHertzsprung crater.[21][20] Independent spectral analysis from the University of Arizona confirmed its Chinese origin.[22]NASA has published a note on the event. China's foreign ministry has denied this identification, stating that the booster had already burned up in the Earth's atmosphere (albeit referring to the laterChang'e 5 mission in his answer).[23][19] TheUS Space Command confirmed the third stage never reentered in Earth's atmosphere,[24] and a compatible item is now present on theSpace-Track catalogue as object 85900.[25] The impactor object was previously misidentified as 2015-007B, the second stage of theFalcon 9 rocket which launched NASA'sDeep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft, but was later correctly identified as the Long March stage in February 2022. The event showed the challenges of tracking small objects in deep space, underlining the importance of sustainability in space operations going forward.[26]
In June 2022, a compatible double crater was found by theLROC team at the same location previously estimated,[18][27] and later byChandrayaan-2 OHRC.[28]
Chang'e 5-T1 also carried the first commercial payload to the Moon[29] called the 4M mission (Manfred Memorial Moon Mission) for the German space technology companyOHB System, in honor of the company's founder,Manfred Fuchs, who died in 2014. Technical management of the 4M mission was performed byLuxSpace. The payload weighs 14 kilograms and contains two scientific instruments. The first instrument is aradio beacon to test a new approach for locating spacecraft.Amateur radio operators were encouraged via prize incentives to receive the transmissions and send the results back toLuxSpace.[30] The second instrument, a radiationdosimeter provided by the Spanish companyiC-Málaga, continuously measuredradiation levels throughout the satellite's circumlunar path.[31][32]
The spacecraft also carries a radiation exposure experiment with bacteria and plants.[1][33][34]
^ab"NASA - NSSDCA - Spacecraft - Details".nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov. Retrieved3 March 2022.The booster used to launch Chang'e 5-T1 went into a highly elliptical Earth orbit after launch. Some calculations show it is on a trajectory to impact the far side of the Moon on March 4, 2022, although China's foreign ministry denied this identification, stating that the booster had already burned up in the Earth's atmosphere. Estimated time of impact for the object is 12:26 UT (7:26 a.m. EST), estimated position at latitude 5.18 N, longitude 233.55 E.
^Jones, Andrew (21 February 2022)."China claims rocket stage destined for lunar impact is not from its 2014 moon mission".SpaceNews. Retrieved21 March 2023.An element of possible confusion remains over which mission Wang referred to on Monday in response to the question about the impending lunar impact from the Associated Press. Both Chinese and English transcripts and Chinese language video of the press conference refer to the "Chang'e-5 mission," rather than the Chang'e-5 T1 mission specifically.
Launches are separated by dots ( • ), payloads by commas ( , ), multiple names for the same satellite by slashes ( / ). Crewed flights are underlined. Launch failures are marked with the † sign. Payloads deployed from other spacecraft are (enclosed in parentheses).
