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(CNN) – China successfully launched an unmanned spacecraft to the moon on Tuesday to collect and return soil samples and lunar rocks, according to Chinese state media Xinhua.
Chang’e 5 took off from the Wenchang spacecraft launch site off the coast of the southern province of Hainan Island at 4:30 am local time.
This is the world’s first sample collection mission since the United States and the USSR launched similar probes more than 40 years ago, Xinhua reports.
Chang’e 5’s total flight time is expected to be 20 days and 2 kilograms of lunar samples are expected to be collected during its mission.
The rocket has three compartments, an orbiter, a lander, an elevator, and a return, with a total takeoff mass of 8.2 tons. When the orbiter enters the Moon’s orbit, the ascendant “will land in the northwestern region of Oceanus Procellarum, also known as the Ocean of Storms, on the near side of the moon in early December,” Xinhua says.
“In 48 hours, a robotic arm will be extended to collect rocks and regoliths on the lunar surface, and a drill will pierce the ground.”
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Since the Soviet Union made a forced landing of Luna 2 on the Moon in 1959, the first human-made object to reach another celestial body, a handful of other countries, including Japan and India, have launched lunar missions.
In the Apollo program, which first put man on the moon, the United States sent 12 astronauts on six flights from 1969 to 1972, bringing back 382 kg of rocks and soil.
The Soviet Union deployed three successful robotic sample return missions in the 1970s. The last, Luna 24, recovered 170.1 grams of samples in 1976 from Mare Crisium, or “Sea of Crisis.”
The Chinese mission wants to bring samples from an unvisited area of the Moon
China’s probe, scheduled to launch in the next few days, will attempt to collect 2 kg of samples in a previously unvisited area in a massive lava plain known as Oceanus Procellarum, or “Ocean of Storms.”
“The Apollo-Moon sampling zone of the Moon, while critical to our understanding, was carried out in an area that comprises much less than half the lunar surface,” said James Head, planetary scientist at Brown University. .
Subsequent data from orbital remote sensing missions have shown a wider diversity of rock types, mineralogies and ages than is represented in the Apollo-Luna sample collections, he added.
“Lunar scientists have been advocating robotic sample return missions to these different critical areas in order to address a number of fundamental questions left over from previous exploration,” Head said.
The Chang’e-5 mission can help answer questions such as how long the moon was volcanically active in its interior and when its magnetic field dissipated, key to protecting any form of life from solar radiation.
(Jin Liwang / Xinhua News via AP)
