Scientific achievements of China's Chang'e project: a bibliometrics-based approach

As an integral component of China’s broader national strategy for deep space exploration, the Chang'e Project has garnered considerable attention from the global academic community. Based on the Web of Science database, this study employs bibliometric methods to quantitatively analyze the number of publications related to the Chang'e Project, their distribution across various disciplines and journals, the competition and cooperation among major countries and institutions, and the trend of scientific outcomes from the Chang'e-1 to Chang'e-5 missions for each scientific payload. We quantify the influence of the Chang'e Project and its contribution to lunar scientific research, and present the following status and trends: (1) the Chang'e Project has propelled China's lunar science research towards the international frontier, with the research team undergoing rapid expansion; (2) the contribution of Chinese scientists to lunar science mainly comes from the in situ exploration of the farside by the Chang'e-4 mission and the analyses of returned samples by the Chang'e-5 mission; and (3) the future breakthroughs in China's lunar science will emerge from the in situ exploration of new regions and the research of new samples. The results of this study will provide important references for China's future strategic planning of deep space exploration and the development of planetary science.