[Asia Economy Reporter Song Seung-yoon] China's unmanned lunar probe Chang'e 5 has safely arrived at an altitude of 400 km above the lunar surface, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency on the 29th.
According to Xinhua News Agency, Chang'e 5 was launched at 8:58 PM (local time) on the 28th and flew for 112 hours to reach an altitude of 400 km above the lunar surface. Chinese aerospace authorities reported that all equipment and controls of Chang'e 5 are functioning normally and that the lunar orbit insertion and other operations proceeded very smoothly.
Chang'e 5 reached its target point after two orbit adjustments and is expected to perform further orbit corrections such as altitude adjustments while above the moon.
Chang'e 5 was launched at 4:30 AM (local time) on the 24th from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in Hainan Province, carried by the latest Long March 5 Yao-5 carrier rocket.
China successfully landed the Chang'e 4 probe on the far side of the moon in January last year, the first in human history, and launched its first Mars probe Tianwen-1 in July this year. Following that, Chang'e 5 was also successfully launched.
China is challenging the mission of collecting lunar samples and returning them to Earth, becoming the third country after the United States and the former Soviet Union to attempt this. Such a mission has not been undertaken for over 40 years since the 1960s and 1970s by the US and the Soviet Union.
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