weatheriscool wrote: ↑Tue Jan 04, 2022 8:39 pm China and Russia team up to establish joint moon base --- Planned Sino-Russian joint moon base aims to overtake the US in reaping lunar strategic benefits
asiatimes.com ^ | January 3, 2022 | Gabriel Honrada
https://asiatimes.com/2022/01/china-and ... moon-base/China and Russia plan to set up a joint moon base by 2027, eight years earlier than originally planned. The joint moon base, called the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), will be a complex of experimental research facilities designed for multiple scientific activities, such as moon exploration, moon-based observation, research experiments and technology verification.
China is planning to launch the Chang’e 8 lunar exploration mission as the first step in establishing the ILRS. The mission is expected to test technology for using local resources and manufacturing with 3D printing.
Presently, China’s lunar presence includes the Chang’e 4 lander and the Yutu 2 rover, whose arrival in 2019 marked humanity’s first landings on the dark side of the moon. Both lunar craft are performing scientific experiments, with Chang’e 4 conducting a lunar biosphere experiment to see how silkworms, potatoes and Arabidopsis (a small flowering plant) seeds grow in lunar gravity, while the Yutu 2 rover is exploring the Von Kármán crater.
China and Russia’s joint moon base plans can be seen as a response to their exclusion from the US Artemis Accords, which aims to establish principles, guidelines and best practices for space exploration for the US and its partners. Its goal is to advance the Artemis Program, the name for US efforts to place itself as the first nation to establish a long-term lunar presence.
China is barred from participating in joint projects with the US in space by the Wolf Amendment, a 2011 measure prohibiting NASA from cooperating with China without special approval from Congress.
China wants to send plants, microbes and lunar resource experiments to the moon in 2028
https://www.space.com/china-microbes-pl ... -moon-2028published about 20 hours ago
An upcoming Chinese lunar mission will carry a small ecosystem and other payloads to test using lunar resources later this decade.
China's Chang'e 8 mission is a precursor mission for a moon base, named the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) that the country wants to build with partners in the 2030s. Chang'e 8 will test key technologies needed to make the ILRS sustainable.
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) revealed details of Chang'e 8's planned payloads in a solicitation for domestic expressions of interest in developing the payloads released on Feb. 7. Notably, these include in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) and terrestrial ecosystem experiments.
The ISRU payload will be designed to melt lunar soil using solar energy. This material will then be used to manufacture components and measure their mechanical and thermal properties. Previous reporting suggests the plan is to produce bricks, which would then be capable of being assembled by robots.
The ecosystem experiment is described as a two-chain terrestrial ecosystem containing plants and microbes. The controlled, sealed environment aims to explore the viability of biological utilization of lunar soil resources and how they potentially support life-support technology — such as food and oxygen production — for a crewed lunar base. The 2019 Chang'e 4 mission notably saw a cotton seed sprout in a container on the far side of the moon.
