Craft carrying lunar rocks lifts off from moon

BEIJING » A Chinese spacecraft lifted off from themoon Thursday night with a load of lunar rocks, the first stage of its return to Earth, the government space agency reported. Chang’e 5, the third Chinese spacecraft to land on the moon and the first to take off from it again, is the latest in a series of increasingly ambitious missions for Beijing’s space program, which also has a orbiter and rover headed to Mars. The Chang’e 5 touched down Tuesday on the Sea of Storms on themoon’s near side. Its mission: collect about 2 kilograms (4 pounds) of lunar rocks and bring them back to Earth, the first return of samples since Soviet spacecraft did so in the 1970s. Earlier, the U.S. Apollo astronauts brought back hundreds of pounds of moon rocks.