Hong Kong
CNN
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China’s Chang’e-6 lunar module returned to Earth on Tuesday, successfully completing its historic mission to collect the first-ever samples from the far side of the Moon, a major breakthrough for the country’s ambitious space program.
The re-entry module “successfully landed” in a designated area in China’s northern Inner Mongolia region shortly after 2 p.m. local time, according to state broadcaster CCTV. A live broadcast by CCTV showed the module landing by parachute to a round of applause in the mission control room.
“The Chang’e-6 lunar exploration mission was a complete success,” Zhang Kejian, head of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), said from the control room.
A search team located the module minutes after it landed, according to CCTV. The live stream showed a worker carrying out checks on the module, which was in a meadow next to a Chinese flag.
The successful mission marks a key milestone in China’s “eternal dream” – as expressed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping – of establishing the country as a dominant space power and comes as a number of countries, including the United States, is also stepping up its own lunar mission. exploration programs.
In a congratulatory message on Tuesday, Xi hailed the mission as “another historic achievement in building a strong country in space, science and technology.”
Beijing plans to send astronauts to the Moon by 2030 and build a research base at the lunar south pole – a region believed to contain water ice, where the United States also hopes to establish a base.
The Chang’e-6 probe is expected to return to Earth with up to 2 kilograms of lunar dust and rocks from the far side of the Moon, which will be analyzed by Chinese researchers before being opened for access by international scientists, according to the CNSA.
Chang’e 6 lunar rover/Weibo
The Chang’e-6 probe was seen raising a Chinese flag with a robotic arm on the far side of the Moon in early June.
The results of the sample analysis could help scientists examine the evolution of the Moon, Earth and the solar system, while helping China use the Moon’s resources for further exploration, say the experts.
The samples were collected using a drill and robotic arm from the vast South Pole-Aitken basin, an impact crater formed about 4 billion years ago on the far side of the Moon , which is never visible from Earth.
An ascender then lifted them from the lunar surface and transferred them into lunar orbit to a reentry vehicle, which then returned to Earth after separating from its lunar orbiter.
The progress of Chang’e-6 – China’s most technically complex mission to date – has been followed with keen interest in the country since its launch on May 3.
Earlier this month, images of the lunar lander flying the Chinese flag and appearing to have pierced the character “zhong” – shorthand for China – on the lunar surface went viral on Chinese social media.
The lunar module’s return Tuesday also comes after suspected debris from another Chinese rocket was seen falling to the ground in southwest China on Saturday, leaving a trail of bright yellow smoke and sending villagers running , according to videos posted on Chinese social networks and sent. to CNN by a local witness.
The Moon’s far side has fascinated scientists since they first observed it in grainy black-and-white images captured by the Soviet Union’s Luna 3 space probe in 1959 – and realized how it was different from the side facing the Earth.
Absent were lunar maria, or large dark plains of cooled lava that mark much of the moon’s near side. Instead, the far side appeared to show an impact record – covered in craters of varying sizes and ages.
Decades later, and about five years after the Chang’e-4 mission made China the first and only country to achieve a soft landing on the far side, scientists in China and around the world are founding large hopes on the information that can be gleaned. from the samples.
“It’s a gold mine…a treasure chest,” said James Head, a professor of planetary geosciences at Brown University, who along with European scientists collaborated with Chinese scientists to analyze samples from the Chang’e-5 mission which returned samples to the near side. . “International scientists are totally enthusiastic about this mission,” he said.
Head pointed to the destruction of many clues to evolutionary history due to shifting Earth plate tectonics and erosion that obscured the planet’s first billion years, including the period when the life emerged.
“The Moon is really the cornerstone for understanding that because its surface has no plate tectonics, it’s actually a frozen record of what it looked like in our early solar system,” he said. he said, adding that understanding the composition of the Moon can not only help our understanding of past but future exploration of the solar system.
Although the stated goal of the Chang’e-6 mission is these broader scientific questions, experts say that analyzing the samples’ composition and physical properties could also help advance efforts to learn how to use the Moon’s resources for future lunar and space exploration. .
“The (Chang’e-6) mission aims to answer specific scientific questions, but the lunar soils collected during the mission can support future resource use,” said Yuqi Qian, a planetary geologist at the University of Hong Kong.
Lunar soil could be used for 3D printing to produce bricks for building research bases on the Moon, while some scientists were already working to research more economical and practical technologies for extracting gases like helium-3, oxygen and hydrogen from the soil. which could support further exploration of the Moon, he said.
Once the samples are received, Chinese scientists are expected to share their data and conduct joint research with international partners, before Beijing later opens the samples for access by international teams, according to statements by CNSA officials.
International teams had to wait about three years to request access to samples from the Chang’e-5 mission, but some of the first published research on these samples came from teams of Chinese and international scientists.
02:42 – Source: CNN
The United States and China advance in space exploration
Chang’e-6 – the sixth of eight planned missions in the Chang’e series – is widely seen as a significant step forward in China’s goal of sending astronauts to the Moon in the coming years.
“Every step of the sample return mission process is exactly what you need to do to land humans on the moon and back,” Head said. “It should be clear to no one that while on the one hand this is a science mission, the command and control aspects (are) exactly what you need for human lunar exploration as well as things like Mars sample return.”
China’s ambitions to send astronauts to the Moon come as the US aims to launch a crewed ‘Artemis’ mission as early as 2026 – in what would be the first such US attempt in more than 50 years.
NASA chief Bill Nelson appeared to point to China’s pace as the engine of American progress, telling lawmakers in April that the two countries were “actually…in a race.”
“What worries me is that they (arrive at the south pole) first and then say, ‘This is our region, stay out,’ because the south pole of the moon is a important part… We think there is water there and if there is water, then there is rocket fuel,” Nelson said.
China has sought to allay concerns over its ambitions, reiterating its position that space exploration should “benefit all humanity” and actively recruiting partner countries for its future international lunar research station.
China and the United States are not the only ones interested in the national prestige, potential scientific benefits, access to resources and deep space exploration that successful lunar missions could bring.
Last year, India landed its first spacecraft on the Moon, while Russia’s first lunar mission in decades ended in failure when its Luna 25 probe crashed into the surface of the moon.
In January, Japan became the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the Moon, although its Moon Sniper lander faced power problems due to an incorrect landing angle. The following month, IM-1, a NASA-funded mission designed by Texas-based private company Intuitive Machines, landed near the lunar south pole.
China plans to launch its Chang’e-7 mission to the lunar south pole region in 2026, while Chang’e-8 will be launched in 2028 to conduct tests to utilize lunar resources in preparation for the research station lunar, Chinese space authorities said earlier this year.
This story has been updated with additional developments.