Like many of my readers I was pleased to see that the Chang’e 5 spacecraft returned to Earth on 16 December 2020 with around 2 kg of lunar rocks. This great achievement was the first lunar sample return mission for China and is indeed the first time any rocks have been brought from the Moon… Continue reading Chinese Moon samples
Tag: Yutu
Chinese Moon missions
Like many people, I was very excited to hear the news on 3 January that the Chinese spacecraft, Chang'e 4, had landed as planned in the Von Karman crater on the far side of the Moon. Chang’e 4 in the Von Karman crater. The crater lies in the South Pole-Aitken basin on the far side of… Continue reading Chinese Moon missions
Chinese manned space programme
On 18 November two Chinese astronauts, Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong, landed back on Earth after spending 33 days in space, an event which was hardly reported in the western media. During their mission they spent 30 days aboard the Tiangong-2 space station. Image from the Chinese National Space Administration Tiangong-2, shown in the mission patch above, is the second… Continue reading Chinese manned space programme
Chinese Manned spaceflight
Welcome Welcome to the latest post from the Science Geek. The topic of this post, which is part of a series about the Moon, is the Chinese manned space programme. As I said in my last post, sadly it is now nearly 42 years since the last Apollo astronauts lifted off from the Moon's surface… Continue reading Chinese Manned spaceflight
Explaining Science 