China’s lunar probe Chang’e-6 has safely returned to Earth with the first rock and soil samples from the far side of the moon.
The re-entry capsule loaded with samples believed to be up to 2.5 million years old landed in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Tuesday, marking a major win for the China National Space Administration (CNSA).
“We declare the Chang’e-6 lunar exploration mission a complete success,” Zhang Kedian, director of the China National Space Administration, said at a televised press conference after the landing.
Chinese scientists hope to learn about the geographical differences between the two sides of the moon, which could provide some insight into the moon’s ancient history.
The near side of the Earth faces the Earth, and the far side faces space. The Moon rotates on its axis, but because it rotates at the same speed as it orbits the Earth, the same side always faces the Earth.
The surface of the far side of the Moon has never been explored, but is known to contain large mountains and deep craters compared to the relatively flat near side.
The unmanned probe, launched on May 3, landed in the South Pole-Aitken Basin, an impact crater formed more than 4 billion years ago, when the Earth was still in its infancy, and remained in space for 53 days.
The samples that scientists hope to find will likely come from different layers of the basin, and they should bear traces of different geological events throughout the cosmic history, including when the Moon was young and had an active core that produced volcanic rocks.
In a statement published in Innovation Monday, a journal published in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, geologist Zhongyu Yue of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said the sample “is expected to help answer one of the most fundamental scientific questions in lunar science research: what geological activity causes the difference between the front and back of the moon and the sun?”
China is the first country to land on the far side of the moon; all previous US and Soviet missions have landed on the near side of the moon.
The moon program is part of an intensifying competition with the United States, which remains the leader in space exploration, as well as other nations, including Japan and India.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping congratulated the Chang’e team, calling the mission a “milestone achievement in our country’s efforts to become a space and technological power.”
China has launched its own space station into orbit and regularly sends astronauts to space, and has conducted several successful missions to the moon in recent years, including the Chang’e-5 lunar probe, which retrieved samples from the near side of the moon.
“This is a world first in the sense that it’s the first time we’ve been able to take off from the far side of the moon and bring back samples,” Richard de Grice, a professor of astrophysics at Australia’s Macquarie University, told The Associated Press.
With post wire
