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China’s Chang’e-5 mission completed a complicated docking maneuver on Saturday as it prepares to return soil samples it collected from the Moon’s surface to Earth.
Chang’e 5 was launched on November 23 atop a Long March 5 rocket, with four main spacecraft. The mission entered lunar orbit on November 28, and its lander and ascent vehicle landed on the Moon on December 1, while its service module remained in lunar orbit. The lander collected rocks and dirt, and on Saturday docked in orbit with the service module. Those samples will now be placed in a return capsule for the trip home, which is expected to land in Inner Mongolia in late December.
If the mission is successful, it will make China only the third country to return samples from the Moon, more than 50 years after the US Apollo missions. The last successful lunar sample return mission was the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission in 1976.
Also on Saturday, the Japanese Hayabusa2 mission landed in the Australian desert, after recovering samples from the asteroid Ryugu.
