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If the Chang’e-5 mission is successful, China will become the third country after the United States and Russia to collect lunar material.
China successfully landed a spacecraft on the surface of the moon late Tuesday in the first mission to retrieve samples from the lunar surface in 40 years, the country’s National Space Administration said.
The space agency said the probe had successfully landed on the near side of the moon and sent images.
China launched its Chang’e-5 probe, which is unmanned from the southern province of Hainan on November 24. The mission, named after the mythical Chinese goddess of the moon, aims to collect lunar material to help scientists learn more about the origins of the moon. and the solar system in general.
Hua Chunying, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, tweeted that the landing was a “historic step”, adding that it would also benefit “international cooperation and the peaceful use of space.”
The mission will attempt to collect two kilograms (4.4 pounds) of samples in an area yet to be explored in a huge lava plain known as Oceanus Procellarum, or “Ocean of Storms” and, if completed as planned, would convert China in the third nation to have recovered lunar samples after the United States and Russia.
# Change5 just landed on the #Moon. A historic step for the China universe probe. And also for international cooperation and the peaceful use of space. #Moon landing pic.twitter.com/5A2vOruKGl
– Hua Chunying 华春莹 (@PonanteCHN) December 2, 2020
We have a * new * lunar lander!
The Chinese # Change5 lander touched down at 43.1 ° N, 51.8 ° W at 15:11 UTC today, December 1.
Here is a small 🧵 of some maps I made of the landing site region, with the main features labeled, starting at a scale of 1: 300,000 (~ 160 km field of view): pic.twitter.com/hsDuEvSAuG
– Paul Byrne (@ThePlanetaryGuy) December 1, 2020
The lander is expected to start piercing the ground with a robotic arm to collect lunar material in about two days, according to state media.
The samples will then be taken into orbit and transferred to a return capsule to return to Earth, where it is expected to land in China’s Inner Mongolia region.
If the mission is successful, it will be the first time that scientists have collected moon rock samples since Russia (then the Soviet Union) brought in material in the 1970s.
China sent its first astronaut into space in 2003 and made its first lunar landing 10 years later. In January of last year, the Chang’e-4 probe landed on the opposite side of the moon, the first space probe of any nation to do so, and in July it launched a spacecraft to Mars to search for water.
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