China’s Chang’e-6 probe returned to Earth with material from the far side of the Moon

The Asian giant’s ship spent only two days on the Moon. It landed this Sunday in the vast Aitken Basin, one of the largest known impact craters in the solar system. Discovered in 2010, it is located at the South Pole and is about 2,500 kilometers long and 13 kilometers deep. He used a surface drill and a robotic arm to collect lunar dust and rocks. In 2019, China already placed a spacecraft on the far side of the Moon (so named because it is not visible from Earth), but did not collect any samples.

The spacecraft, launched on May 3 from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center in southern Hainan province, consists of four parts: the orbiter, lander, elevator and lander. The elevator’s job was to transport lunar samples collected by the lander to the lunar orbiter. Upon arrival, they were transferred to the re-entry module, which is responsible for returning them for analysis. The probe also carried several scientific teams from the European Space Agency (ESA), France’s National Center for Space Research (CNES), Italy and Pakistan.

Flawless

In contrast to the problems that NASA and the private companies it partners with are struggling to place on the Moon, China continues to demonstrate absolute efficiency in its lunar missions. Chang’e 3, 4, and 5 landed on the Moon without any problems in 2013, 2019, and 2020, respectively. The first made the country the third to have the opportunity to land on the Moon after the United States and the Soviet Union. The second was the aforementioned milestone of placing the craft on the far side, and the last one collected 1.7 kilograms of samples from the lunar surface. In his analyses, he first directly discovered the presence of water on the Moon.

The Chang’e program, named after the goddess who, according to Chinese tradition, lives on the moon, began in 2007 with Chang’e 1, which orbited the satellite for a year and a half until it suffered a controlled crash in March 2009. In the coming years, Chang’e 7 will explore the moon’s south pole in search of water, and Chang’e 8 will try to establish the possibility of building a base there in 2030.