Monday, February 17, 2025
LaunchesScience&Enviornment

China’s lunar landing

The Chang’e-6 probe is assigned the mission of landing in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the moon, which constantly faces away from the Earth. Following this landing, it will collect and bring back samples from the moon.

On Friday, China launched an uncrewed spacecraft on a nearly two-month mission to collect rocks and soil from the far side of the moon, becoming the first country to undertake such a bold endeavor. The Long March-5, China’s largest rocket, took off at 5:27 p.m. Beijing time (0927 GMT) from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on the southern island of Hainan, carrying the Chang’e-6 probe weighing over 8 metric tons.

The mission of Chang’e-6 is to land in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the moon, which always faces away from the Earth, and then collect and return samples. This launch represents another significant achievement in China’s lunar and space exploration program.

“It is a bit of a mystery to us how China has been able to develop such an ambitious and successful program in such a short time,” remarked Pierre-Yves Meslin, a French researcher involved in one of the scientific objectives of the Chang’e-6 mission.

In 2018, China achieved its first unmanned moon landing with Chang’e-4, also on the far side of the moon. Then, in 2020, Chang’e-5 marked the first time in 44 years that humans retrieved lunar samples. If successful, Chang’e-6 could make China the first country to collect samples from the moon’s “hidden” side.

The launch was attended by scientists, diplomats, and space agency officials from France, Italy, Pakistan, and the European Space Agency. All of these countries have payloads aboard Chang’e-6 for studying the moon.

Ge Ping, deputy director of the China National Space Administration’s (CNSA) Lunar Exploration and Space Program, stated that no U.S. organizations applied to secure a payload spot on the Chang’e-6 mission. This absence of collaboration is due to a ban imposed by U.S. law, preventing China from engaging in any joint projects with NASA, the U.S. space agency.

“The far side of the moon has a mystique, perhaps because we literally can’t see it. We have never seen it apart from with robotic probes or the very few number of humans that have been around the other side,” remarked Neil Melville-Kenney, a technical officer at ESA collaborating with Chinese researchers on one of the Chang’e-6 payloads.

Following the separation of the probe from the rocket, it will take four to five days to reach the moon’s orbit. Subsequently, in early June, a few weeks later, it will land on the moon.

Once on the moon, the probe will spend two days collecting 2 kilograms (4.4 lb) of samples before returning to Earth. It is anticipated to land in Inner Mongolia upon its return.

The window for the probe to collect samples on the far side is 14 hours, compared to 21 hours for the near side.

The samples brought back by Chang’e-5 enabled Chinese scientists to uncover new details about the moon, including more precise dating of the timespan of volcanic activity on the moon and the discovery of a new mineral.

Ge emphasized the scientific significance of Chang’e-6, particularly in determining the geological age of the South Pole-Aitken Basin. His team estimated this age to be approximately 4 billion years, significantly older than the samples previously retrieved by the Soviet Union and the United States, which were around 3 billion years old, as well as the 2-billion-year-old samples from Chang’e-5.

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