China's Chang'e-6 lunar exploration spacecraft landed in the northern Chinese region of Inner Mongolia on Tuesday, becoming the first country to bring back samples from the far side of the moon.
According to state broadcaster CCTV, the re-entry capsule landed on the moon's surface at 2:07 pm Beijing time (0607 GMT), carrying lunar soil that the spacecraft collected after it successfully landed earlier this month in the Moon's South Pole-Aitken Basin, a lunar crater that always faces away from Earth.
Shortly after the capsule landed, Zhang Kejian, head of the China National Space Administration, announced the successful completion of the Chang'e-6 lunar mission. Chinese President Xi Jinping said the completion of the mission was a “historic achievement” in China's quest to become a space and scientific superpower.
The Chang'e-6 probe was launched on a Long March 5 rocket from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on the southern island of Hainan on May 3. The samples will be transported by air to Beijing for analysis, according to CCTV.
Although it is not yet known whether the planned 2 kilograms of samples will be successfully brought back, whatever the quantity, the samples will be closely analyzed by Chinese and foreign scientists who believe they will reveal new insights about the formation of the Earth, Moon and solar system.
Samples from the Chang'e-5 mission, which returned samples from the Moon's near side, led to the discovery of new minerals and provided more precise information about the Moon's geological age.
The success of the Chang'e-6 mission could give China's lunar and space exploration program, already in fierce competition with the United States, greater attraction among foreign governments and scientists.
China's attempt to collect samples from the far side of the Moon comes at a time when the exploration of lunar resources and the militarization of space are becoming increasingly pressing questions due to geopolitical tensions.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson this year expressed concern about China's lunar exploration program and said the “space race” between the two superpowers was intensifying.
“I'm glad there's a resurgence in this (space) race, but of course, I would like to see us racing alongside each other and together,” said Neil Melville-Kenny, a European Space Agency (ESA) technical officer who is working with Chinese researchers on the Chang'e-6 payload.
As the EU and China clash over a range of geopolitical issues from trade to the Ukraine war, European space agencies and scientists are working closely with Chinese counterparts on data and samples collected by China's lunar missions.
“We know that (the far side of the moon) is literally a different place, it's made of different materials than the near side of the moon, it has a different history … bringing these samples back is really of fundamental scientific importance,” Melville-Kenny said.
The engineer said ESA will meet with the China National Space Administration in October to discuss further cooperation.
He said, “The cooperation we have at the moment (with China) is a small step, it started a long time ago, maybe the conditions were a little different then. Going forward, I hope there will be more cooperation.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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