20 January 2021
The Chang'e 5 orbiter is now flying toward Lagrange Point 1, which is located between the Earth and the sun, for extended scientific operations, said Pei Zhaoyu, deputy director of the China National Space Administration's Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center and spokesman for the Chang'e 5 mission. "We didn't set this task for the orbiter when we launched Chang'e 5," Pei said in Beijing on 18 January. "But we soon found that thanks to the outstanding performance of our carrier rocket, Chang'e 5 was placed exactly in its preset orbital position so there would be no need for extra correction maneuvers beside the originally planned ones, which meant the orbiter could save a lot of fuel."
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