China’s lunar probe Chang’e-6 successfully landed on the far side of the moon on Sunday and collected samples, state media reported, marking the latest leap for Beijing’s decades-old space programme.
Chang’e-6 landed in the vast South Pole-Aitken Basin, one of the largest impact craters in the solar system, state news agency Xinhua said, citing the China National Space Administration.
According to the agency, this will be the first time samples have been taken from a little-explored area of the moon’s surface.
Chang’e-6 is on a technically complex 53-day mission that began on May 3.
The probe descended from an orbit about 200 kilometers (125 miles) above the moon on Sunday and searched the lunar surface for a landing site, Huang Wu, of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, told state CCTV.
“Descent into a (low) orbit involves several risks, so precise control procedures were required to put (the probe) into the pre-determined orbit,” Huang said.
After that, “the spacecraft’s velocity relative to the moon had to be rapidly decelerated to zero within 15 minutes, which required a huge amount of propellant, essentially half the total mass of the spacecraft,” he said.
Now that the probe has landed, it will attempt to scoop up lunar soil and rocks at the landing site and conduct other experiments.
The mission is expected to be completed within two days, according to Xinhua. The probe will use two collection methods: a drill to extract subsurface samples, and a robotic arm to grab specimens from the surface.
And they would have to attempt an unprecedented launch from the moon’s surface, which always faces away from Earth.
Scientists say the far side of the moon – so named because it is not visible from Earth, not because it receives any sunlight – offers great promise for study because its craters are less covered by ancient lava flows than those on the near side.
Material from the dark side could help us better understand how the moon formed in the first place.
– China’s space ambitions –
China’s “Space Dream” plans are moving forward at a rapid pace under President Xi Jinping.
China has poured huge resources into its space program over the past decade and has undertaken a series of ambitious efforts to close the gap with traditional space powers the United States and Russia.
The company has had some notable achievements, including the construction of a space station called “Tiangong.”
Beijing has landed robotic probes on Mars and the Moon, and China is only the third country to independently send humans into orbit.
But Washington warns that China’s space program is being used to hide military objectives and attempts to establish space superiority.
China aims to send a manned probe to the moon by 2030 and plans to build a base on the moon.
The US also plans to send astronauts back to the Moon by 2026 on the Artemis 3 mission.
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