Chang’e-2 breaks through in deep space exploration

Chang'e-2 satellite successfully crossed the threshold of 10 million kilometers of flight in its deep space exploration under the precision control of the Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC) at 23:46 on January 5, 2012, a new landmark in China's deep space exploration.

Compared to the Chang'e-1 satellite which flew for 380,000 kilometers, Chang'e-2's breakthrough of 10 million kilometers in its prolonged service for almost two years has been so far the farthest distance that the Chinese spacecraft has ever achieved.

According to Zhou Jianliang, chief engineer of the BACC, Chang'e-2 became the first satellite in the world to take off under the precision control of the BACC from the lunar orbit to enter the Sun-Earth Lagrange L2 point about 1.5 million kilometers away from the Earth and conduct a close-range probe into the Toutatis asteroid 7 million kilometers from the Earth. Chang'e-2 has also achieved fruitful results in terms of the optimized analysis and usage of fuel, the study of orbital decay law, and so on, having thus laid down a solid foundation for China's follow-up space flight projects, including the implementation of manned spacecraft as well as lunar exploration.