China Calls Off Ambitious Ice-Hunting Moonshot a Day Before Flight

"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:

Chang'e 7 didn't meet unspecified 'launch requirements':

China's Manned Space Agency (CMSA) on Sunday cancelled a planned Monday moonshot launch.

The mission plan for Chang'e 7 calls for it to send a lander to a region near the Moon's South Pole, in a location thought likely to contain ice in deep craters.

The lander carries two other vehicles: a wheeled rover, and a hopper. China wants to test the latter to see if it can jump over crater rims to look for ice, and then hop out again and continue exploring.

The lander is also important to China, because it's equipped with tech to enable a precision autonomous landing - a tricky feat given the chaotic terrain moon mappers believe awaits it.

China has built the lander, rover, and hopper to survive multiple Lunar nights, the stretches of two weeks or more without light, during which the mercury can dip below a hellish minus 200 Celsius in the shadows.

The mission also involves an orbiter to help the ground vehicles send data home and carry out its own observations.

Richard de Grijs, a professor of astrophysics at Australia's Macquarie University, last week wrote that the mission is significant because it represents "a transition from simply exploring the Moon to determining whether its resources can actually be used."

"Chinese scientists won't be looking for signs of water; we already have compelling evidence for lunar polar water," he wrote. "The question at the mission's core is where exactly that water is located, in what form and concentration, and whether it could realistically be accessed."

Sadly, we won't begin to get the answers to those questions until next year.

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