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At around 23:00 on December 2, Chang'e-5 probe landed successfully on the moon with a bright five-starred red flag slowly unfurled from the probe.
A simulated image of the Chinese national flag unfurling from Chang'e-5 probe successfully on the lunar surface.
The Chang'e-5 mission is of great significance, marking the conclusion of China's current three-step lunar exploration program of orbiting and landing, and bringing back samples. The Chinese national flag can unfurl independently mainly by means of a flag presentation system. The system is developed by CASIC, consisting of three parts: a Chinese national flag, an unleashing device and an unfolding mechanism. The entire system is about 0.5m long. The system lifts off with the probe in a folded state, and unlocks and unfolds according to instructions after the probe lands on the moon.
Considering harsh thermal environment and space environment, various environmental adaptation measures are required to ensure normal operation of the system that is installed outside the lander of Chang'e-5. As a landmark that highlights China's major scientific and technological innovation activities, the flag presentation system must unlock and unfold independently with high reliability and high safety. To take rich-element and well-scaled flag images by a panoramic camera, the flag presentation system needs to extend from the probe at the time of unfolding, and provide a larger flag size and a good shooting angle. While meeting the above-mentioned functional requirements, the system also needs to be of light and miniaturized design and meet extremely strict requirements on weight.
To solve the technical difficulties of extreme space environment adaptability outside the capsule, unlocking and unfolding with high reliability and safety, and lightweight and miniaturization, the development team introduced bold innovations and scientific validations in various aspects such as system design, material selection and processing technology, to overcome the unfolding problems one by one. To ensure that nothing will go wrong with the system, the team carried out a large number of environmental tests, life tests and reliability analysis, as well as tests at all stages at the launch site to ensure that the product went to the moon without any question and successfully completed the mission.
