In a landmark achievement for space exploration, China’s Chang’e-6 spacecraft has successfully collected samples from the far side of the moon and is now en route to Earth.
The probe’s successful departure from the Moon means China is closer to becoming the first country to return samples from the far side of the Moon.
It is also the latest leap for Beijing’s decades-old space programme, which aims to send a crewed mission to the Moon by 2030.
The mission is the sixth in the Chang’e Moon exploration programme, which is named after a Chinese Moon goddess.
It is the second designed to bring back samples, following the Chang’e 5, which did so from the near side in 2020.
Citing the China National Space Administration (CNSA), Chinese news agency said that the ascender of the Chang’e-6 probe took off at 7:38am local time on Tuesday, June 4, 2024, and entered a preset orbit around the moon.
It described the move as “an unprecedented feat in human lunar exploration history.”
The Chang’e-6 probe was launched last month and its lander touched down on the far side of the Moon on Sunday, June 2, 2024.
It used a drill and robotic arm to dig up soil on and below the Moon’s surface.
The news agency added that the probe’s landing site was the South Pole-Aitken Basin, an impact crater created more than 4 billion years ago, which is 13km (8 miles) deep and has a diameter of 2,500km (1,500 miles).
The agency said that it is the oldest and largest of such craters on the moon, so may provide the earliest information about it, adding that the huge impact may have ejected materials from deep below the surface.
The agency cited the CNSA as saying that the spacecraft stowed the samples it had gathered in a container inside the ascender of the probe as planned.
The container will be transferred to a reentry capsule which is due to return to Earth in the deserts of China’s Inner Mongolia region sometime around June 25, 2024.
After successfully gathering its samples, the Chang’e-6 unfurled China’s national flag for the first time on the far side of the Moon.
According to a Chang’e-6 engineer, Zhou Changyi, the flag, made from the volcanic rock basalt, was designed to resist corrosion and the extreme temperatures on the far side of the moon with an eye on future lunar missions.
Zhou said that the rock “was crushed, melted and drawn into filaments about one third of the diameter of a human hair, then spun into thread and woven into cloth.”
“The lunar surface is rich in basalt. Since we’re building a lunar base in the future, we will most likely have to make basalt into fibers and use it as building materials,” Zhou added.
Samples Believed To Provide Clues To Moon’s Evolution
Scientists around the world are following the return of the lunar samples.
They hope that the samples collected by the Chang’e-6 lander could provide key clues into the origin and evolution of the moon, Earth and the solar system, while the mission itself provides important data and technical practice to advance China’s lunar ambitions.
“The enigmatic lunar far side is so different from the lunar nearside in so many ways, that without returned samples, lunar scientists can’t fully understand the moon as an entire planetary body,” said James Head, a Professor Emeritus at Brown University who has collaborated with Chinese scientists leading the mission.
Head said, “Returned samples from Chang’e 6 will permit major strides to be made in solving these problems.”
Missions to the Moon’s far side are more difficult because it does not face the Earth, requiring a relay satellite to maintain communications.
The terrain is also more rugged, with fewer flat areas to land.
The far side of the moon is out of range of normal communications, which means Chang’e-6 must also rely on a satellite that was launched into lunar orbit in March, the Queqiao-2.
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