Chinese probe lands on Moon to gather lunar samples
BEIJING: A Chinese space probe yesterday began drilling on the surface of the Moon hours a er landing, in an ambitious a empt to bring back the first lunar samples in four decades.
Beijing has poured billions into its military-run space programme, with hopes of having a crewed space station by 2022 and of eventually sending humans to the Moon.
The Chang’e-5 spacecra — named for the mythical Chinese moon goddess — touched down on the near side of the Moon on Tuesday, and is now gathering samples from the surface, the China National Space Administration said.
Chang’e-5’s goal is to collect lunar rocks and soil to help scientists learn about the Moon’s origins, formation and volcanic activity.
If the return journey is successful, China will be only the third country to have retrieved samples from the Moon, following the US and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s.
This is the first such a empt since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission in 1976.
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying yesterday described the mission as ‘revolutionary in increasing human understanding of the history of the Moon’.
The probe had finished drilling for samples by yesterday morning and is now ‘ gathering surface samples as planned’, China’s National Space Administration said.
The spacecra was launched from the country’s southern Hainan province last week and entered lunar orbit on Saturday a er a 112-hour journey.
The spacecra plans to collect two kilogrammes of material in a previously unexplored area known as Oceanus Procellarum — or ‘Ocean of Storms’ — a vast lava plain, according to the science journal Nature.
The probe was designed to both get samples from the Moon’s surface, as well as drill a two-metre deep hole and gather specimens from there, to ensure a diverse collection.
State media said the cra was preparing for ‘ around 48 hours’ of tasks on the lunar surface.
The samples will then be returned to Earth in a capsule programmed to land in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region in December, according to US space agency Nasa.