China’s Chang’e 6 lunar mission rocket prepares to lift off in South China’s Hainan province on May 3, 2024. Photo: Bloomberg.
China’s Chang’e 6 mission landed in the Apollo basin of the Moon to collect the first samples from the dark side of the Moon.
For several years now, China has been making news thanks to its Chang’e space missions. This nation’s interest in lunar exploration began to take shape in the early 2000s with the establishment of this program named in honor of the Moon goddess of Chinese mythology.
The namesake’s predecessors had already achieved resounding successes. Chang’e 4 made a historic landing on the far side of the Moon in 2019, making China the first country to explore this region. A year later, Chang’e 5 did the same, managing to collect samples from the Moon and bring them back to Earth. The Chang’e mission began in 2007.
Chang’e 6 achieves historic landing
This time around, the Chang’e 6 robot achieved a successful landing on the far side of the Moon. This achievement represents China’s second lunar sample return mission, following the success of Chang’e 5 in 2020, which brought back 1.73 kilograms of lunar material. International collaboration is also a highlight of this mission, with contributions from teams from the European Space Agency, France, Italy, and Pakistan.
The current mission, which successfully landed on the moon in the early morning of this Sunday (Beijing time), aims to collect approximately two kilograms of lunar samples for analysis on Earth. Launched on May 3 aboard a Long March 5 rocket, the spacecraft entered lunar orbit five days later. Its landing was directed towards the Aitken Basin of the lunar south pole, an area of special scientific interest since it is believed that contains ice water.
This area was selected for its moderate exposure to sunlight and its reliable communication signals, which will eventually facilitate the operation of the spacecraft and the transmission of data to Earth. Along the same lines, to overcome communication challenges on the far side of the Moon, China used the Queqiao-2 relay satellite, launched in March, which will be key in communication between the ship and Earth.
The spacecraft, which will remain on the Moon for three days, has advanced tools to drill and collect samples of lunar soil. A panoramic camera and a lunar radar will be used to collect samples and carry out detailed geological evaluations of the area.
Once collection is complete, the samples will be launched into lunar orbit and transferred to the module’s reentry capsule for return to Earth. For now, it is estimated that the capsule will land in Inner Mongolia on June 25, and if everything goes as planned, the samples will be sent to a laboratory in Beijing to be studied.
Featured image:
(Alba Ciudad) with Orinoco Tribune
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SL
