Andrew JonesVarmennettu tili

The rocket for the launch is China's largest (57m, 860 tonnes), the Long March 5, which was designed with the Chang'e-5 mission in mind. The failure of its 2nd launch in July 2017 delayed CE-5 by 3 years. But now it's on the pad.pic.twitter.com/zEsQAHWJEy

The mission is to last around 23 days from launch til landing in Inner Mongolia, where reentry craft from China's crewed Shenzhou missions land. This image from the Chang'e-5-T1 test mission (2014) which tested the high-speed reentry from the Moon, inc. bounce off the atmosphere.pic.twitter.com/kkK9ufkTns

The ~850-tonne Long March 5 is launching to 8.2-tonne Chang'e-5 towards the Moon in order to bring back ~2 kgs (upper limit 4 kg) of samples. The vast of majority of this mass is fuel for overcoming gravity.pic.twitter.com/3eJSXsDroy

The Chang'e-5 spacecraft itself consists of four modules: service module for propulsion; lander; ascent vehicle on the lander for getting back into lunar orbit; and a reentry vehicle for atmospheric reentry. See this overview of the mission profile: https://www.planetary.org/space-missions/change-5 …pic.twitter.com/HsNlcw2zyW

This complex mission profile involving lunar orbit rendezvous and docking (like Apollo rather than the direct return of Soviet Luna missions) indicates China has its eyes on even more ambitious missions like putting astros on the Moon and a Mars sample return.pic.twitter.com/Du6mUdMaql

There's little info at this point on the mission timeline. My estimate based on old journal articles, press statements and guesswork is: - 112 hours/4.6 days to Moon - Sunrise over Mons Rümker landing area late-ish on Nov 27. - Lunar orbit insertion: 200 km orbit mid Nov. 28...pic.twitter.com/UmHDlooL2S