China’s Chang’e-6 lunar lander successfully landed on the far side of the moon on Sunday.
The Chang’e-6 lunar lander successfully landed on the far side of the moon on Sunday morning Beijing time. The landing is an important step for an ambitious mission that could help realise the country’s ambition to send astronauts to the moon.
China’s National Space Administration said the Chang’e-6 probe has landed in the South Pole-Aitken Basin, where it will begin collecting samples from the lunar surface. The landing marks the second time a mission has successfully reached the back side of the moon. China first accomplished this historic feat in 2019 with the Chang’e-4 probe.
Therefore, if all goes according to plan, the mission may become a key milestone in China’s quest to become the dominant space power in the face of growing competition. It began on 3 May and is expected to last 53 days.
China’s most complex robotic lunar mission to date. The unmanned mission aims to bring samples from the back side of the moon to Earth for the first time. China aims to land astronauts on the moon by 2030 and begin building a research base at its south pole, a region believed to contain water ice.
In addition, samples collected by the Chang’e-6 descent module may provide key information about the origin and evolution of the Moon, Earth and the solar system. The mission provides important data and technical practice to advance China’s lunar ambitions, experts said.
Further steps
The Chinese Chang’e-6 lander landed in an impact crater known as the Apollo Basin, located in the vast South Pole-Aitken Basin about 2,500 kilometres in diameter. It orbited the moon for about 20 days as part of a large probe consisting of four parts: an orbiter, a landing module, a hoist and a return module. Using a drill and a mechanical arm, it is expected to collect up to 2 kilograms of lunar dust and rocks from the basin, a crater formed about 4 billion years ago.
The probe will spend two days on the back side of the moon and 14 hours to collect lunar soil samples, Xinhua reported.
To fulfil its mission, the lander will need to robotically place these samples in the rising vehicle that landed with it. The takeoff vehicle will then return to lunar orbit, where it will dock with the samples and transfer them to a reentry capsule, according to mission information provided by China’s National Space Administration.
The capsule and orbiter will then return to Earth orbit and separate from each other. This will allow the descent vehicle to return later this month to the Siziwang Banner landing site in China’s rural Inner Mongolia region. Besides, the complexities of this mission suggest that the back side of the moon is out of range of normal bonding, meaning that Chang’e-6 must also rely on the Queqiao-2 satellite, launched into lunar orbit in March.
China plans to launch two more missions in the Chang’e series as it moves closer to its goal of sending astronauts to the moon by 2030.
