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Although Chang'e-6 has come to a perfect end. But for the same moon landing, Chang'e-6 took 53 days, and Apollo 11 successfully completed the mission in only 8 days.
So why did the mainland's Chang'e-6 take so long, the gap is puzzling, and at the same time, it is also a gap of ten years for the Chang'e lunar exploration series that was born in our country.
So what kind of work did the mainland's Chang'e-6 carry out in these 53 days?
Chang'e-6 and Apollo 11.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, space exploration has become an inevitable trend for human beings to explore the future, but the process of human exploration of space has not been smooth, and there have been many successive competitions in history.
Especially in the 60s of the 20th century, the American human lunar mission Apollo began to be implemented, and soon American astronauts successfully landed on the moon.
As the first country to put forward the "lunar exploration" program, the mainland began its domestic lunar exploration mission in the mid-1960s, but at that time, the mainland's economy was still in a state of ruin, its national strength was obviously not comparable with that of the United States, and its space technology was also in a backward stage.
It was not until 2004 that after a long period of accumulation and development, the mainland finally realized the mainland's first artificial earth satellite and the Shenzhou manned spacecraft, which became an international leading space project.
At that time, the countries led by the United States already had their own set of systems for space technology, the most shocking of which was the Apollo lunar exploration program of the United States, which took "the return of lunar exploration" as the main content and arranged a number of missions, among which the Apollo 11 astronauts successfully walked on the moon in July 1969 and became the first successful landing of mankind on the moon as the most representative.
The Apollo 11 was arranged as the first actual combat implementation of the "Moon Special Operation" project, which successfully ensured the safe landing of the Apollo astronauts on the moon and then returned safely, which was a key event for the successful implementation of a series of lunar exploration missions in the mainland Chang'e lunar exploration series.
It was after Apollo 11 successfully completed the main mission of lunar exploration that mankind's understanding of the moon gradually deepened, and the mainland also quickly began the specific implementation of the continental lunar exploration mission, which is an important symbol that the continent has stepped into the forefront of the world as a major lunar exploration power.
Since then, the mainland's lunar exploration missions have continued to achieve fruitful results, and finally on 28, 2013, the mainland's Chang'e-3 successfully landed on the moon, opening the era of the mainland's lunar landing.
The Chang'e series of lunar exploration missions is the long-term development of mainland space exploration, providing important guidance for mankind to further explore the future of space, and the Apollo 11 mission has also played an important role in the mainland's lunar exploration mission.
However, some people think that there is a huge gap in the time taken between Chang'e-6 and Apollo 11 on the mainland, why is that?
Chang'e-6 mission design.
On October 23, 2019, the Chang'e-6 probe built by Chang'e-6 was successfully launched, starting a 53-day Chang'e-6 lunar exploration mission.
The Chang'e-6 lunar exploration mission is designed to be extremely complex, with a total of 11 flight phases, including the launch into orbit, the Earth-Moon transfer, the lunar orbit injection, the release of Chang'e-6, the separation of the Chang'e-6 and Chang'e-6 orbiter combinations, the landing rover landing mission, the entry of Chang'e-6 and Chang'e-6 into lunar night mode, the transmission of data from Chang'e-6 to Chang'e-6, the integration of Chang'e-6 and Chang'e-6, and the braking around the moon.
These 20 phases were formulated in great detail, during which not only did it require many orbit adjustments, but at the same time, several stages of tasks involved important contents of the mainland's current technology.
When Chang'e-6 arrives on the moon, it will require a rigorous landing and sampling process, which carries many risks.
In contrast, the mission of Apollo 11 is much simpler than that of Chang'e-6, and the mission itself is designed to be much faster than that of Chang'e-6.
From an executive point of view, this is mainly because Apollo 11 is designed to carry out the moon mission safely and quickly, so the design of Apollo 11 is more concise than that of Chang'e-6.
Soon, the Americans' plans began, and the Apollo 11 rocket was completed at the time of launch, after which Apollo 11 had to go through three orbital adjustments in space, one hour, three hours, and 30 hours.
In the end, after eight days of flying, Apollo 11 successfully returned to Earth.
Generally speaking, the Apollo 11 rocket launch system designed by the United States is relatively efficient, and Apollo 11 has almost no interference from the entire process from launch to moon landing, so the mission time is relatively short.
On the other hand, the mainland's Chang'e-6 mission content shows that the goal of the mainland's lunar exploration mission is to make the best landing on the lunar surface, and automatically observe and monitor the lunar surface conditions on the moon, and then collect relevant samples on the lunar surface, carry the corresponding tracking and control data, and finally return to the earth.
It is precisely because of this that the mainland exploration mission will have 200 days to adjust the orbit, because Chang'e-6 needs to carry out detailed sampling and observation of the moon, so the mainland's engineers spent so long to adjust the orbit in order to ensure that Chang'e-6 can carry out the mission smoothly after landing on the moon.
The different historical missions of the two lunar exploration missions.
After comparing whether the two lunar exploration missions took the same time, some people raised doubts about the mainland's Chang'e-6, arguing that the mainland's Chang'e-6 took too long and was not as fast as Apollo 11.
However, this comparison of the time taken by the two lunar missions is not rigorous, and the length of time taken by the two lunar missions varies according to their respective historical missions.
First of all, we need to clarify what are the goals of these two lunar missions?
The goal of Apollo 11 was to complete the mission of landing humans on the moon in a limited time and bring back rock samples from the moon, and this mission has made a great contribution to the entire human space exploration after its success.
But after the success, along with the study of lunar samples, scientists also realized that in-depth research on the moon can help people understand space more comprehensively.
For the mainland's Chang'e-6, the main purpose of the mainland's lunar exploration mission is to observe and record the lunar surface conditions during the 41-day lunar night, and at the same time collect sample material on the lunar surface and return to Earth after completing these missions.
It can be seen that the length of time and the content of the work of the two lunar exploration missions vary depending on the mission.
epilogue
In the course of several decades of development, the mainland's aerospace strength has been greatly strengthened, and this lunar exploration mission is an important symbol of the mainland's advanced technology coming to the fore.
When the mainland's Chang'e lunar exploration mission landed on the moon, the people of the whole country were ecstatic about the development of the mainland's aerospace industry, and the success of this lunar exploration mission was not only the personal achievement of the mainland's research team, but also the concentrated embodiment of the mainland's aerospace science and technology, and a perfect witness to the mainland's aerospace industry.
However, people should not simply question the mainland's mission on the basis of the time required by the mission, and should pay more attention to the final completion of the mainland's lunar exploration mission and its significance to the mainland's aerospace industry and space exploration than the missions of other countries.