The second braking maneuver was performed around 11:21 a.m. Beijing time. As a result of this maneuver, the spacecraft entered a 3.5-hour orbit about the Moon at about 11:35 a.m. with perilune (its closest point to the lunar surface) at a distance of 132 miles (213 kilometers) and with apolune (furthest point away) at about 1,050 miles (1,700 kilometers).

Mission controllers at the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center (BACCC) will perform one more maneuvers at approximately 8:09 a.m. on Wednesday before the spacecraft settles into its final orbit about the Moon. This orbital period will be about 127 minutes long, just over two hours, in a polar circular orbit. Its speed will be about 1 mile (1.59 kilometer) per second.

So far, Xinhua, China’s news agency, reports that the maneuvers were performed very accurately. Fuel was saved because of this, which may add up to one one year in the duration of the mission.

The BACCC is the command center for China’s space program named the China National Space Administration (CNSA). The Beijing center controls the mission of spacecraft, such as Chang’e 1, from its complex, nicknamed Aerospace City, located northwest of Beijing.

If all goes well with the spacecraft, Chang’e 1 will begin to transmit photographs of the Moon back to the Earth later in November. Its mission was originally scheduled to last one year, but may be extended past this mark. Its primary mission is to gain scientific information about the Moon, specifically to help with future manned missions to the Moon.

The Chinese are expecting to launch an unmanned mission to land a rover onto the lunar surface by the year 2012. Then, in 2017, the Chinese space agency is expecting to land another rover on the Moon and return it to the Earth filled with lunar soil and other samples taken from the Moon.

The last manned mission to land a human on the Moon was in 1972 when Apollo 17 landed in December.

The next fifteen years will be very exciting for exploration of the Moon because the United States will not be the only nation with its eyes set on exploring the Moon. China, Japan, India, and the United States are the prime players with the best chance to become the first country to set foot on the Moon in the twenty-first century. The United States accomplished this feat in the twentieth century, but then promptly ended its manned program to explore the lunar surface.

Hopefully, this time around, humans will continue to consistently explore the solar system, both with unmanned (robotic) probes and manned spacecraft for its scientific knowledge rather than primarily as a race to beat someone else.

Hopefully, too, the exploration of the Moon and other bodies will be performed, at least to a degree, in cooperation—with several nations helping each other. This cooperation has been successful with the building of the International Space Station and can be done again with other missions in space.

On the other hand, competition is inevitable between countries. It is quite helpful in promoting additional exploration so as not to lose one’s advantage over other countries.

Learn more about the Chang’e 1 mission from the China National Space Administration at: http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/n615709/n772514/n772543/93747.html.


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