China planning to offer more space for foreign equipment on future Chang’e 8 moon mission
- The 2028 mission could carry up to 200kg of equipment from other countries, more than 10 times the payload carried on next year’s Chang’e 6 mission
- Chang’e 8 is likely to touch down close to the lunar south pole, where China hopes to build a lunar base in just over a decade’s time
China’s upcoming Chang’e-8 moon mission will offer an unprecendented amount of space for equipment for other countries.
The mission is currently slated to launch in 2028, and will have 200kg (440lb) of payload capacity for interested countries, Wang Qiong, the mission’s deputy chief designer, said on Monday.
These could be instruments fixed to the lander or items such as robots, rovers and flight vehicles that can work independently after landing, Wang told the International Astronautical Congress in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Letters of intent must be submitted to China National Space Administration by the end of this year, and priority will be given to innovative projects, robots which can grab objects from the moon’s surface – including lunar soil – and scientific instruments that complement Chinese ones.
CNSA also welcomes mission-level cooperation, where China and its partners would launch and operate their probes separately but carry out spacecraft-to-spacecraft interaction in orbit or joint exploration on the surface, he said.
Opening up as much as 200kg payload mass for international partners is unprecedented.