AI will help Chang'e 5 to scoop up lunar soil

Whether exploring the moon or Mars, advanced AI technology is indispensable. Today, AI technology research in China has reached the advanced level in the world.

"Chang'e-5 will land soft on the moon, and then sample back." Ouyang Ziyuan, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and first chief scientist of China's Lunar 

Exploration Project, said at the 2009 Software Definition Satellite Summit Forum held on July 5 that there would be a lot of technical difficulties in the process of launching, landing, sampling and returning of lunar samples to spacecraft, all of which have been overcome.

Ouyang Ziyuan introduced that the core technologies of Chang'e-5 to achieve breakthroughs at present include: launch, ground-to-moon transfer, near-month braking, lunar flight, lunar descent, lunar sampling, lunar rise, rendezvous and docking, lunar waiting, lunar-to-earth transfer, orbit separation and reentry recovery.

"With an overall load of 8.2 tons, a new launch vehicle will be launched at Wenchang Launch Center in Hainan." Ouyang Ziyuan said. Chang'e-5 will achieve four major breakthroughs: the first automatic sampling on the lunar surface; the first takeoff from the lunar surface; the first unmanned rendezvous and docking in lunar orbit 380,000 kilometers away; and the first return to Earth with lunar soil at near-second cosmic speed.

The lunar landing site of Chang'e 5 is on the front of the moon. "Our chosen landing site is a long way from the six landing sites of the Apollo Program in the United States, about 1,000 kilometers away, where there will be new phenomena and discoveries." Ouyang Ziyuan said.

Chang'e 5 still uses soft landing. Soft landing is actually the autonomous decision-making of artificial intelligence. "The detector is very smart, it will always shake around to take pictures, thinking that this place is not safe, if the four points can not be in the same level, it will roll over." Ouyang Ziyuan said that it has been calculating, picking, searching, and finally making judgments and decisions.

Why not take a picture and let the people on the planet know where they are? "It's too late to help him judge." Ouyang Ziyuan explained that it takes 1.3 seconds for a photograph to be transmitted to the earth. After receiving it, it takes a few seconds to judge "Oh, no here, find again". It takes another 1.3 seconds for another instruction to be sent to it.

Science and Technology Daily reporter learned: Chang'e 3's practice has proved that the artificial intelligence decision-making method can make the detector's four legs landing safely on a horizontal plane. Chang'e-4 also made adjustments according to the characteristics of the mountainous backside of the moon, but all completed the tasks of video acquisition of lunar data, autonomous decision-making and selection of the landing point.

"After the moon, the probe will shovel the soil and drill the core automatically." Ouyang Ziyuan said that Chang'e No. 5's sampling method is compound, with deep-hole drilling sampler and shovel-type composite function sampler to complete the sampling.

This drilling process has been repeatedly tested in the laboratory. People don't know what's going on beneath the lunar surface. They may encounter hard boulders, soft soil, or other minerals. The wear and tear of machine parts are different from that of thermal expansion and contraction. Ground laboratories imagine different working conditions, and simulate the lunar soil conditions to carry out Chang'e-5 sampler. Verification.

"After sampling, it will not return to the earth." Ouyang Ziyuan said it could not bring enough fuel back when it came to the moon.

The elevator will take off on the lunar surface for the first time, but only for short flights. "There is only one way, after entering the moon, there will be a `spacecraft'waiting in the lunar space to rendezvous and dock with it, and transfer the lunar soil." Ouyang Ziyuan said that their docking will be "needle-tip" to "needle-tip" docking, the earth simply can not provide data and monitoring support.

The process of rendezvous and docking needs to be completed by Chang'e 5 itself.  Chang'e 5 will have a "brain" and a pair of "eyes". Measuring the sensitive period provides precise information like "eyes", and Chang'e 5's intelligent brain will complete autonomous control.
Science and technology is a double-edged sword, a small breakthrough may be epoch-making. Like the use of steam engines, gunpowder has been invented to make cannons for 600 years.
"When they return to Earth, they encounter high-speed friction in the atmosphere. If the speed is too high, it will probably be burned down, think of ways to do it." Ouyang Ziyuan said that this method is similar to the principle of "water drifting", that is, let the return capsule bounce out of the upper atmosphere and come back again, and then travel through the atmosphere after the speed drops. Relevant return techniques have been validated. The lunar exploration test vehicle launched by China in 2014 has successfully verified the jumping trajectory technology.