Liquid water evaporation - solid water sublimation to vacuum through micro porous medium is a vital thermal control approach for spacecraft with short period peak heat load to survive, including manned moon landing, extravehicular mobility unit, deep space exploration and so on. To solve the heat dissipation challenges for the lunar lander and ascender combination in Chang'E-5 unmanned automated lunar sampling mission, waster sublimator is selected to cool the system by evaporating/sublimating water to the vacuum lunar environment. A water sublimation heat dissipation system (WSHDS) is proposed and fabricated as a supplementary heat sink of the radiator, theory researches and experiments were conducted in the past decade to verify the phase change and heat mass transfer process in transient start-up, steadystate work performances, performances in microgravity and 1/6g lunar gravity environment. The WSHDS cooled the lunar lander and ascender combination with a 5-10 K temperature decrease in the 383 K-413 K lunar environment, and successfully supported the Chang'E 5 lunar exploration in December 2020. This context summarizes the fabrication and application of WSHDS for the first Chinese Chang'E 5 lunar sampling and return mission, and will propose valuable experiences for the future applications in manned space exploration and lunar exploration.