China launches historic mission to retrieve samples from the back of the Moon

China on Friday launched an unmanned spacecraft on a nearly two-month mission to deliver rocks and soil from the back of the moon, becoming the first country to make such an ambitious attempt, UNN reports citing Reuters.

Details

The Long March-5, China's largest rocket, lifted off at 17:27 Beijing time (09:27 GMT) from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on the southern island of Hainan with the Chang'e-6 probe weighing more than 8 tons.

Chang'e-6 is tasked with landing in the South Pole - Aitken basin on the back side of the Moon, which is permanently rotated away from Earth, after which it will retrieve and is expected to return samples.

The launch marks another milestone in China's lunar and space exploration program.

"It's a bit of a mystery to us how China has managed to develop such an ambitious and successful program in such a short time," said Pierre-Yves Meslin, a French researcher working on one of the scientific tasks of the Chang'e-6 mission.

The launch was attended by scientists, diplomats, and representatives of space agencies from France, Italy, Pakistan, and the European Space Agency, all of which carry payloads for lunar exploration on board Chang'e-6.

However, according to Ge Ping, deputy director of the Lunar and Space Exploration Program of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), no American organization has applied for a payload space.

US law prohibits any cooperation between the US space agency NASA and China.

After the probe separates from the rocket, it will take four to five days to reach the lunar orbit. In early June, it is expected to land a few weeks later.

Once on the Moon, the probe will spend two days digging up 2 kilograms of samples before returning to Earth, where it is expected to land in Inner Mongolia.

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

Ge said that the scientific value of Chang'e-6 lies in the geological age of the South Pole - Aitken Basin, which his team estimates to be about 4 billion years old, much older than samples previously brought back by the Soviet Union and the United States, which were about 3 billion years old, as well as the 2 billion year old samples from Chang'e-5.

In addition to discovering new information about the closest celestial body to Earth, Chang'e-6 is part of a long-term project to establish a permanent research station on the Moon: The International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), led by China and Russia.

The construction of such a station will become an outpost for China and its partners in deep space exploration.

"We know that the Moon may have resources that could be useful in the future, so the European Space Agency, NASA, the Chinese agency and others around the world are going to the Moon," said James Carpenter, head of ESA's Lunar Science Office.

"Part of the rationale is understanding these resources," Carpenter said.

Wu Weiren, chief designer of China's lunar exploration project, speaking at the China Space Conference 2024 last month, said that the "basic model" of the ILRS will be built by 2035.

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In 2018, Chang'e-4 made China's first unmanned landing on the Moon, also on the reverse side. In 2020, Chang'e-5 became the first time humans have obtained lunar samples in 44 years, and Chang'e-6 could make China the first country to obtain samples from the "hidden" side of the Moon.

The samples brought back by Chang'e-5 allowed Chinese scientists to discover new details about the Moon, including a more precise date for the time period of volcanic activity on the Moon, as well as a new mineral.