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BEIJING (AP) – An unmanned Chinese spacecraft carrying rocks and soil from the Moon returned safely to Earth on Thursday (December 17) on the first mission in four decades to collect lunar samples, the Xinhua news agency said. .
The capsule carrying the samples collected by the Chang’e-5 space probe landed in China’s northern Inner Mongolia region, Xinhua said, citing the China National Space Administration (CNSA).
The agency’s director, Zhang Kejian, declared the mission a success, Xinhua said.
With this mission, China became the third country to have recovered samples from the Moon, after the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s.
Beijing is seeking to catch up with Washington and Moscow after taking decades to match the achievements of its rivals and has invested billions in its military-led space program.
Chang’e-5, named after a mythical Chinese Moon goddess, landed on the Moon on December 1. While there, he hoisted the Chinese flag, the country’s space agency said.
When the probe left the Moon two days later, it was the first time China managed to lift off from an alien body, he said.
The module then went through the delicate operation of connecting in lunar orbit with the part of the spacecraft that brought the samples to Earth.
Scientists hope the samples will help them learn about the Moon’s origins, formation and volcanic activity on its surface.
The Chang’e-5 mission was to collect two kilograms (4.5 pounds) of material in an area known as the Oceanus Procellarum, or “Ocean of Storms,” a vast previously unexplored lava plain, according to the scientific journal Nature.
The capsule will be airlifted to Beijing for opening, and samples from the Moon will be handed over to a research team for analysis and study, the space agency said.
SPACE DREAM
China will make some of the samples available to scientists in other countries, said Pei Zhaoyu, deputy director of CNSA’s Center for Space Program and Lunar Exploration.
Xinhua described the mission as one of the most challenging and complicated in China’s aerospace history. The probe comprised separate spacecraft to reach the moon, land on it and collect the samples, climb back up, and then return the rocks and soil to Earth, Xinhua said.
The return capsule entered Earth’s atmosphere at an altitude of about 120 kilometers (75 miles). When it was about 10 kilometers above the ground, a parachute was opened and it landed safely, after which a search team recovered it, the agency said.
This was the first such attempt to collect such samples since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission in 1976.
Under President Xi Jinping, plans for China’s “space dream,” as he calls it, have accelerated.
China hopes to have a manned space station by 2022 and eventually send humans to the Moon.
China launched its first satellite in 1970, while manned spaceflight took decades longer, and Yang Liwei became the country’s first “taikonaut” in 2003.
A Chinese lunar rover landed on the opposite side of the Moon in January 2019 in a world first that fueled Beijing’s aspirations to become a space superpower.
The latest probe is among a series of ambitious goals, including creating a powerful rocket capable of delivering heavier payloads than NASA and private rocket company SpaceX can handle, a lunar base, a space station with permanent crew and a rover from Mars.
