Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images/File
On May 3, 2024, the Long March 5 rocket carrying the lunar probe Chang’e 6 was launched from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan Province, southern China.
Hong Kong
CNN
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China’s lunar lander Chang’e-6 successfully landed on the far side of the moon Sunday morning Beijing time, marking a significant step for an ambitious mission that could advance the country’s ambitious plans to send astronauts to the moon.
The China National Space Administration announced that the Chang’e-6 probe will land in the South Pole-Aitken Basin and begin collecting samples from the lunar surface.
The unmanned mission, China’s most complex robotic lunar exploration project to date, aims to be the first to bring samples from the far side of the moon back to Earth.
The landing will be only the second mission to reach the far side of the moon – China was the first to achieve the historic feat in 2019 with its Chang’e-4 probe.
If all goes according to plan, the mission, which is scheduled to begin on May 3 and last for 53 days, could mark a significant milestone in China’s efforts to become a space power.
The country’s plans include landing astronauts on the moon by 2030 and establishing a research base in Antarctica, where ice is thought to exist.
Sunday’s landing came as a growing number of countries, including the United States, focus on the strategic and scientific benefits of expanding lunar exploration in an increasingly competitive field.
Experts say the samples collected by the Chang’e-6 lander could provide important clues about the origin and evolution of the Moon, Earth and the solar system, while the mission itself will provide important data and technological practice to advance China’s lunar exploration plans.
Chang’e-6 landed inside an impact crater known as the Apollo Basin, within the vast Antarctic-Aitken Basin, about 2,500 kilometers in diameter, according to Chinese state media Xinhua. The spacecraft had been orbiting the moon for about 20 days as part of a larger spacecraft made up of four parts: an orbiter, a lander, an ascent vehicle and a re-entry module.
It now plans to use a drill and mechanical arm to extract up to two kilograms of lunar dust and rocks from the basin, a crater that formed about four billion years ago.
The probe will spend two days on the far side of the moon, collecting lunar soil samples over a 14-hour period, according to Xinhua.
To complete the mission, the lander will need to robotically load those samples onto the ascent vehicle that touches down alongside it.
The ascent vehicle will then return to lunar orbit and dock with the re-entry capsule to transfer the samples, according to mission information provided by the China National Space Administration.
The re-entry capsule and the probe will then return to Earth’s orbit and separate, with the re-entry capsule scheduled to return to the Siziwangqi landing site in rural Inner Mongolia, China, later this month.
This technically complex mission is made even more difficult by its location: the far side of the moon is outside normal communication range, so Chang’e-6 must also rely on the Queqiao-2 satellite, which was launched into lunar orbit in March.
China plans to launch two more missions in the Chang’e series as it moves closer to its goal of sending astronauts to the moon by 2030.
Several countries are expanding their lunar programs, with an increasing emphasis on securing access to resources and further exploring deep space.
Last year, India landed a spacecraft on the moon for the first time, but Russia’s first moon landing mission in decades ended in failure when the Luna 25 probe crashed into the lunar surface.
In January, Japan became the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the Moon, but its Moon Sniper lander suffered power problems due to an improper landing angle. The following month, IM-1, a mission designed by the private Texas-based company Intuitive Machines and funded by NASA, landed near the South Pole.
The landing was the first by a U.S.-made spacecraft in more than 50 years and is one of several commercial missions NASA plans to launch as soon as 2026 to return U.S. astronauts to the lunar surface and explore it before building a science base camp.
