The last “soft” landing on the moon was by the Soviet Luna 24, which made its unmanned, non-destructive landing on Augsust 18th, 1976 and returned to Earth four days later. That was 37 years ago.
This week the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced that it has finished construction of its first lunar landing module. It is now ready to move Chang’e 3 to the “launch implementation phase,” and fully expects to launch China’s first moon landing mission by the end of the year. This will be an unmanned mission, but given that China only just launched its first lunar orbiter, Chang’e 1, in 2007, the military-led space agency is making remarkably quick progress.
China, Japan, India, Russia, and the US are currently the only countries to have put objects into a stable lunar orbit, and if Chang’e 3 is a success they will be just the third nation ever to achieve a “soft” landing on the moon — meaning that the lander will not be destroyed in the process.
This is a big deal for China, which will become the third nation (after the US and Russia) to make a successful “soft” landing on the moon.
One wonders if we’ll ever see another Sputnik effect upon this country.
I’d like to think that something would help motivate this country back into space, but I don’t think today’s political climate and culture are in a similar enough position for news like this to motivate us.
US 1st lunar orbiter in 1966, MANNED landing in 1969. Seems the Chinese program is not so remarkably quick given that they have had close to 50 years of additional time to ‘learn’ from others. I’m just trying to put some historical perspective on this. What the US and Soviet Union did in the 1960s truly was remarkable. While putting a lander on the moon is still not easy, it’s not really pioneering either.
It doesn’t need to be pioneering. It just needs to be there, helping them learn how to do whatever’s next on their list.
Meanwhile, NASA loses expertise by attrition-aging. We’re going to have to figure much of this stuff out, all over again.