Edited and translated by Huang Beibei, People's Daily Online
Deep space exploration technology, as an important means for human beings to protect the earth, go into the universe, and look for a new home, is to become one of the main development direction of aerospace. Although full of challenges and risks and having encountered failures, human exploration of deep space never stops.
Since the United States and the former Soviet Union started the lunar exploration program in 1958, the world's developed countries and the major powers of Space Technology has carried out a variety of deep space exploration activities, and launched more than 200 detectors, including more than 120 for the moon, 40 for Mars and Venus respectively.
Ye said that all the planets of the solar system have been detected to varying degrees. The understanding of the solar system gained through deep space exploration activities is thousands of times more than the total knowledge mankind accumulated in thousands of years.
With regard to astronomical observations, human beings have sent astronomy satellite of different band into space, such as U.S. Gamma Ray Observatory, Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF), Infrared Telescope Facility, NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (NASA IRTF), and Hubble Space Telescope which attracts the most attention.
As the leading project of the second lunar exploration phase, after finishing the required engineering validation and scientific exploration mission on June 9, 2011, Chang'e-2 went toward the Sun-Earth second Lagrange point (L2) which is 1.5 million kilometers away, and China has become the world's third country that have arrived at the L2 point, opening a new journey of deep space exploration.
On Dec. 13, 2012, Chang'e-2 flew to deep space about 7 million kilometers away from Earth, and passed Bellona at the close distance of about 3 kilometers, capturing high resolution picture of the asteroid, following the United States, ESA and Japan to conduct another successful detection of asteroids.
Ye said that China has mastered a number of deep space exploration technologies during the lunar exploration project, and also built a number of infrastructures. During the second phase of lunar exploration, China has built two large ground-based monitoring stations; coupled with other technologies, China's deep space monitoring and control capabilities as well as communications capabilities have been greatly improved. "We are able to reach Mars which is 400 million kilometers from Earth, and has the ability to conduct remote monitoring and control and communication in Mars exploration."
"It is expected that in the second half of this year China will launch Chang'e-3 for scientific exploration of the moon, to achieve 'landing on the moon' for the first time, with the lunar rover to work on the moon for three to six months and complete the data detection and send them back," Ye said.
Ye expected that around 2020, China is to realize the collection and return of lunar soil.
Read the Chinese version: 中国航天：探月之后还探啥
Source: People's Daily; Author: Jiang Jianke and Yu Siyi
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