Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of China’s lunar exploration program, is giving a report named “Chang’e Project: China’s lunar exploration dream”. (Image/SIA)

Ouyang Ziyuan (left) is taking picture with Yu Haibin (right), director of SIA, after the report. (Image/SIA)

Ouyang Ziyuan, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the chief scientist of China’s lunar exploration program, visited Shenyang Institute of Automation (SIA) on June 20, 2012, and gave a report named “Chang’e Project: China’s lunar exploration dream”. Yu Haibin, director of SIA, Wang Tianran, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) and Han Enhou, vice president of CAS’ Shenyang Branch attended the session.

Chinese Lunar Exploration Program (CLEP) is also known as the Chang'e program, named after an ancient Chinese legend about a beautiful young fairy who took a magic potion, flew to the moon, and stayed there as Goddess of the Moon. Being the chief scientist of the project, Ouyang Ziyuan is called “the Father of Chang’e Project”, to show people’s respect to the scientist, who is a prominent cosmochemist and geochemist in China.

In his report, Academician Ouyang introduced the history and achievements of human being’s lunar exploration firstly, emphasizing on the Project Apollo, which sent humans to land on the Moon for the first time. Then, from the political, economic and military perspectives, he illustrated the reasons of returning to the Moon projects of various countries in the world. Academician Ouyang recalled the process of drawing up the short-term goal and long-term planning of China’s lunar exploration, highlighted on the scientific goal, strategic planning and progress of the CLEP, as well as the launching, operating and scientific data obtaining of the unmanned lunar orbiter Chang’e 1. He also displayed pictures of the Moon captured by the orbiter. 

Through the comparison and analysis of the new space program of the United States and lunar exploration projects of Russia, Japan and India, etc., Academician Ouyang briefly introduced the phase two and phase three of lunar exploration of China. In the end, Academician Ouyang answered questions raised by the participants.  (Dai Tianjiao)