Spacecraft lands on moon to gather rocks and soil

China has landed a robotic spacecraft on the moon, a state newspaper reported on Tuesday. The probe will gather rocks and dirt from the lunar surface, with the goal of returning the first cache of moon samples to Earth since 1976.

The spacecraft,

Chang’e-5, was the third successful uncrewed moon landing by China since

2013, when Chang’e-3 and its Yutu rover became China’s first visitor to make a lunar soft landing. In 2019, Chang’e-4 landed on the moon’s far side, the first spacecraft from Earth to ever do that. At least three more Chang’e moon landers are planned for the coming decade, ahead of China’s aspiration of building a moon base for astronauts in the 2030s.

A Long March 5 rocket carrying the probe launched on early last Tuesday from a site on China’s southern Hainan Island. In an unusual move for China’s typically secretive space program, the liftoff and journey to orbit was covered live by state broadcasters, complete with footage made by cameras mounted on the rocket.

If the operations on the moon and the return to Earth are successful, China will be only the third nation to bring lunar samples here. NASA astronauts accomplished that feat during the Apollo moon landings, as did the Soviet Union’s Luna robotic landers, ending with Luna 24 in 1976.

After the spacecraft entered orbit around the moon, Chang’e-5 was split into two: the lander now on the surface and an orbiter that awaits its return.

The lander touched down at Mons Rümker, a volcanic plain on the moon’s near side that is estimated to be around 1.2 billion years old. That is considerably younger than the places explored by Apollo and Luna, which were more than 3 billion years old.

The lander will need to accomplish its drilling and scooping tasks within a single lunar day, which lasts 14 Earth days. It is not designed to survive the frigid and dark lunar night.

The Chang’e-5 lander includes a small rocket, and before the sun sets, it will blast off with the rock and soil samples. The sample is scheduled to land in China’s Inner Mongolia region in the middle of December.