Landing Site Selection and Overview of China\u2019s Lunar Landing Missions

Jianjun Liu,Chunlai Li,Xingguo Zeng,Wangli Chen,Xin Ren,Qin Zhou,Xu Tan,Ziyuan Ouyang,Xiaoxia Zhang,Yuxuan Liu,Wei Yan,Bin Liu,Dawei Liu,Wei Zuo

doi:10.1007/s11214-020-00781-9

Abstract

Landing site selection is of fundamental importance for lunar landing mission and it is closely related to the scientific goals of the mission. According to the widely concerned lunar science goals and the landing site selection of the ongoing lunar missions; China has carried out the selection of landing site for a series of Chang’ E (CE) missions. Under this background, this paper firstly introduced the principles, process, method and result of landing site selection of China’s Lunar Exploration Program (CLEP), and then analyzed the support of the selected landing sites to the corresponding lunar research. This study also pointed out the outcomes that could possibly contribute to the key lunar questions on the basis of the selected landing sites of CE-4 and CE-5 such as deep material in South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin, lunar chronology, volcanic thermodynamics and geological structure evolution history of the Moon. Finally, this approach analyzed the development trend of China’s follow-up lunar landing missions, and suggested that the South Pole Region of the Moon could be the landing site of high priority for the future CE missions.

Highlights

IntroductionIn 2005, during the demonstration of China’s Lunar Exploration Program, Ouyang et al summarized 14 key science concepts which are closely relevant to lunar exploration (Ouyang et al 2005; Li et al 2019b)
Lunar landing missions are important to solve some key scientific concepts of the Moon, and the landing site selection is an essential work for the mission
The study of some core lunar science goals could not be fully filled at present due to the limited spatial distribution of the available landing sites such as 1) There were too few landing sites in the lunar far side; 2) No landing sites are located at the high latitudes; 3) Lunar samples with specific type of mare rocks are still not available; 4) Lunar samples with relative young age are still not available

Summary

Introduction

In 2005, during the demonstration of China’s Lunar Exploration Program, Ouyang et al summarized 14 key science concepts which are closely relevant to lunar exploration (Ouyang et al 2005; Li et al 2019b). In 2006, a new understanding of the lunar geologic structure and its evolution was proposed by a number of planetary scientists, and 9 key concepts for current lunar science were summarized according to the comprehensive research results obtained based on remote sensing data from Clementine and Lunar Prospector missions, exploration data from 6 Apollo manned lunar exploration missions, and laboratory analysis of returned lunar samples and meteorite (Jolliff 2000; Jolliff et al 2006). In 2017, Lunar Exploration and Analysis Group (LEAG) updated and improved 11 core scientific concepts of lunar exploration, and proposed research suggestions for these scientific concepts in “Advancing Science of the Moon” (LEAG 2017) based on the NRC report. In 2019, European Space Agency (ESA) proposed 7 lunar science activities of higher priority for the decade (ESA 2019)

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Results

Conclusion