China’s Chang’e-6 lunar module returned to Earth on Tuesday, successfully completing its historic mission to collect the first samples from the far side of the moon in a major step for the country’s ambitious space program.
The reentry module “landed successfully” at a designated area in China’s northern Inner Mongolia region just after 2pm local time, according to state broadcaster CCTV. Live broadcast by CCTV showed the module landing with a parachute and receiving huge 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 within minutes of its landing, according to CCTV. In the live broadcast, a worker was seen checking the module standing in the meadow next to the Chinese flag.
The successful mission is a major milestone in China’s “eternal dream” of making the country a dominant space power, as Chinese leader Xi Jinping has put it, and comes as many countries, including the United States, are powering up their own moons. discovery programs.
In his congratulatory message on Tuesday, Xi hailed the mission as “another landmark achievement in building a strong country in space, science and technology.”
Beijing plans to send astronauts to the moon by 2030 and establish a research base at the moon’s 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 researchers in China before being made available to international scientists. CNSA.
Experts say results from analysis of the samples could help scientists delve deeper into the evolution of the moon, Earth and the solar system, and could also help China’s aim to use the moon’s resources to advance its research.
Using a drill and robotic arm, the samples were collected from a site in the sprawling South Pole-Aitken basin, an impact crater that formed on the far side of the moon about 4 billion years ago and was never visible to Earth.
An ascent vehicle then lifted them from the lunar surface and transferred them to a reentry vehicle in lunar orbit; this vehicle returned to Earth after leaving lunar orbit.
The progress of Chang’e-6, China’s most technically complex mission to date, has been followed with intense interest within the country since its launch on May 3.
Earlier this month, images of the lunar lander displaying the Chinese flag and appearing to puncture the character “zhong” (short for China) on the lunar surface went viral on Chinese social media.
The return of the lunar module on Tuesday came after debris from a separate suspected Chinese rocket crashed to the ground in southwestern China on Saturday, leaving a trail of bright yellow smoke and sending villagers running, according to videos posted and posted on Chinese social media. by a local witness to CNN.
‘Treasure’ from the far side
The far side of the Moon has been a point of fascination for scientists since they first looked at grainy, black-and-white images taken by the Soviet Union’s Luna 3 spacecraft in 1959 and noticed how different it was from the Earth-facing side.
There were no lunar maria, or large, dark plains of cooled lava that pitted much of the moon’s near side. Instead, the far side showed a crash record covered in craters of varying sizes and ages.
Decades later, and nearly five years after the Chang’e-4 mission made China the first and only country to complete a soft landing on the far side, scientists from both China and around the world have high hopes for the information that might be gathered. from examples.
“This is a gold mine…a treasure chest,” said James Head, a professor of planetary earth sciences at Brown University who collaborated with European scientists and Chinese scientists who analyzed samples returning near-edge samples from the Chang’e-5 mission. . “International scientists are completely excited about this mission,” he said.
Head noted that many clues to evolutionary history have been lost due to shifting Earth’s plate tectonics and erosion obscuring the planet’s first few billion years, including the period when life emerged.
“The moon is really the cornerstone for our understanding that because its surface doesn’t have plate tectonics, it’s actually a frozen record of what our solar system looked like in its early days,” he said, adding that understanding the structure of the moon not only helps our research. Understanding the past but future exploration of the solar system.
While these broader scientific questions are the stated focus of the Chang’e-6 mission, experts say analyzing the composition and physical properties of the samples could also help advance efforts to learn how to exploit resources on the moon for future lunar and space exploration.
“The (Chang’e-6) mission focuses on answering specific scientific questions, but lunar soils collected from the mission could support future resource exploitation,” said Yuqi Qian, a planetary geologist at the University of Hong Kong.
While lunar soil can be used for 3D printing to produce bricks for the construction of research bases on the moon, some scientists were already trying to find more economical and practical technologies to extract gases such as Helium-3, oxygen and hydrogen from the soil. this could support further lunar exploration, he said.
Chinese scientists are expected to share data and conduct joint research with international partners after receiving the samples, before Beijing later makes the samples available to international teams, CNSA officials said.
International teams had to wait nearly three years to apply for access to samples from the Chang’e-5 mission, but some of the earliest published research on these samples was done by teams of Chinese and international scientists.
‘Race’ to the Moon
Chang’e-6, the sixth of eight planned missions in the Chang’e series, is seen as an important step forward for China’s goal of sending astronauts to the moon in the coming years.
“Every step in the sample return mission process is exactly what you need to do to land humans on the moon and return,” Head said. “While this is a scientific mission, it should not escape anyone that the command and control aspects are exactly what you need for human exploration on the Moon, as well as things like returning the Mars sample.”
China’s ambition to send astronauts to the moon comes as the United States aims to launch a manned “Artemis” mission as early as 2026; This will be America’s first such initiative in more than 50 years.
NASA chief Bill Nelson noted China’s pace as a driving force in U.S. progress, telling lawmakers in April that the two countries were “actually in a race.”
“My concern is that they get to the south pole first and then say, ‘this is our territory, you stay out.’ Because the south pole of the moon is an important place… We think there’s water there, and if there’s water, then there’s rocket fuel,” Nelson said.
China has sought to allay concerns about its goals by reiterating its stance that space exploration should “benefit all of humanity” and by actively recruiting country partners for the planned international lunar research station.
China and the United States are not alone in considering the national prestige, potential scientific benefits, access to resources, and further deep space exploration that successful lunar missions could bring.
While India landed its first spacecraft on the moon last year, Russia’s first lunar mission in decades ended in failure when its Luna 25 probe crashed into the moon’s surface.
In January, Japan became the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the Moon, but the Moon Sniper lander faced power problems due to the wrong landing angle. The following month, IM-1, a NASA-funded mission designed by private Texas-based firm Intuitive Machines, touched down near the moon’s south pole.
China is scheduled to launch the Chang’e-7 mission to the south polar region of the Moon in 2026, while Chang’e-8 is planned to be launched in 2028 to conduct tests aimed at the use of lunar resources in preparation for the lunar research station. Chinese space officials said this earlier this year.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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