Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab

A leading designer of China’s Moon exploration program, and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, advises that the country could perform a crewed lunar landing before 2030.

“I personally think that as long as the technological research for manned moon landing continues, and as long as the country is determined (to achieve the goal), it is entirely possible for China to land people on the moon before 2030, ” said Ye Peijian in a recent China Central Television (CCTV) interview.

As reported by China’s Xinhua news agency, Ye added: “Countries that can lead in space technology have advanced technologies in various fields. In turn, space technology is something that can feed back to technologies in other aspects.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping inspects Chang’e-5 lunar sample return capsule.
Credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab

Return sample success

In December 2020, China’s Chang’e-5 robotic lunar lander retrieved lunar samples weighing about 1,731 grams. Chang’e-5 was the first lunar sample-return mission since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 in 1976. The successful mission made China the third country to return specimens from the Moon after the former Soviet Union and via the U.S. Apollo program.

Landing leg of Chang’e-5 lander.
Credit: CNSA/CLEP

Ye served as the chief director of Chang’e-5 program.

After studying the Chang’e-5 lunar samples, Chinese researchers in October announced that they have dated the youngest Moon rock at around 2 billion years in age. The finding extended the “life” of lunar volcanism 800-900 million years longer than previously known, the Xinhua story notes.

Ye said the discovery about the history of the Moon bolstered China’s space research status in the international community. After the Moon and Mars, China’s next target in deep-space exploration could be an asteroid mission, Ye said, adding that his team is already working on the effort.