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For the first time in more than four decades, humanity has brought lunar rocks to Earth.
A capsule loaded with lunar soil and gravel landed in Inner Mongolia today (December 16) at 12:59 pm EST (1759 GMT), crowning China’s historic whirlwind. Chang’e Mission 5.
The last such lunar delivery was courtesy of the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission, which returned around 170 grams (6 ounces) of material in 1976. The Chang’e 5’s path should be much longer, around 4, 4 lbs. (2 kilograms), if everything went according to plan on the lunar surface.
China on the moon! A history of Chinese lunar missions in pictures
The four module, 18,100 lbs. (8,200 kg) Chang’e Mission 5 – China’s first sample return effort – released November 23 and reached lunar orbit five days later. Two of the four modules, a lander and an attached ascent vehicle, landed near Mons Rümker, a volcanic mountain in the huge region of the moon Oceanus Procellarum (“Ocean of Storms”), on December 1.
The solar powered lander was equipped with cameras, a ground-penetrating radar, and an imaging spectrometer to measure its surroundings. But the lander’s main job was to collect samples, which it did eagerly for the next two days, collecting things from the surface and up to 2 meters underground.
On December 3, this lunar material was launched aboard the ascent vehicle, which reunited with the other two Chang’e 5 modules, an orbiter and a return capsule, in lunar orbit on December 5. (The takeoff apparently damaged the lander, which stopped working on December 3. But this was not a great loss; the lander would have died on December 11 anyway, when darkness descended on Mons Rümker).
Chang’e 5’s team dislodged the ascent vehicle on December 7, sending the ship back to the moon with a crash. Five days later, the orbiter and the return capsule began the journey back to Earth, culminating today with the landing of the capsule in Inner Mongolia.
Really a whirlwind.
Related: We may be in a ‘golden age’ of sample return space missions
Chang’e 5 was the last mission in the Chang’e program of robotic lunar exploration, named after a moon goddess in Chinese mythology. Chang’e 1 and Chang’e 2 elevated lunar orbiters in 2007 and 2010, respectively, and Chang’e 3 placed a landing and rover duo on the lunar near side in December 2013.
Next up was the Chang’e 5 T1, which launched a prototype return capsule around the moon in October 2014 to help prepare for the landing that occurred today. Then came Chang’e 4, which in January 2019 made the first soft landing on the mysterious far side of the moon. That landing involved a pair of landers and a rover, as with Chang’e 3.
The lander and rover of the Chang’e 4 are still working fine, as is Chang’e 3 Landing Module. (The Chang’e 3 rover died after 31 months of work on the lunar surface.)
With the apparent success of Chang’e 5 (mission teams still need to inspect and evaluate the returned sample), China has become the third nation to bring lunar material to Earth. The other two are the Soviet Union and the United States, which transported home about 842 pounds. (382 kg) of moon rocks and soil during the six Apollo surface missions between 1969 and 1972.
Video: See the Chinese mission Chang’e 5 land on the moon
The Chang’e 5 samples should provide a new window into lunar history and evolution, scientists say, given that the rocks in the Mons Rümker region are believed to have formed only about 1.2 billion years ago.
“All the volcanic rocks collected by Apollo were over 3 billion years old. And all the young impact craters whose ages have been determined from sample analysis are less than one billion years old,” Bradley Jolliff, planetary scientist at the University of Washington. in St. Louis, said in a statement.
“So the samples from Chang’e 5 will fill a critical gap,” Jolliff said. “These samples will be a treasure!”
Today’s landing was the second return to Earth of its kind in just 11 days. On December 5, Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission return capsule. landed in the Australian outback with precious pieces from the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu. And more such cosmic deliveries are coming: NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is scheduled to return samples from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu in September 2023.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book on the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
