A symposium on lunar exploration was held August 20 to 25 in Guiyang, capital of Northwest China's Guizhou Province. The meeting was jointly chaired by Prof. Sun Jiadong, CAS member and chief designer of China's lunar exploration program (CLEP), and Prof. Ouyang Ziyuan, CAS member and chief scientist of CLEP. Its participants included officials, scientists and engineers from China Space and Technology Corporation, CAS, National Astronomical Observatories at CAS, the CAS Institute of Geochemistry, and the Chinese Academy of Space Technology.
Chinese scientists started preliminary studies on the necessity and feasibility of China's moon exploration program in the 1990s. In 1998, a systematic analysis on the program was initiated at the suggestion of Prof. Ouyang, cosmochemist at the CAS Guiyang-based Institute of Geochemistry, and its first-phase scientific objectives and implementation scheme were proposed. In August 2000, a CAS proposal on the scientific objectives and effective payloads of a resource satellite for moon exploration passed the scrutiny of a panel of experts under the auspices of the State Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.
This workshop was focused on science and technology issues for lunar exploration. The participants worked out a detailed plan for the next move after much discussion on pre-research stage of CLEP.
