China’s Chang’e-6 lander touches down on far side of moon on rock sample mission (2024)

China has landed on the moon’s far side for a second time, and will soon start collecting rock samples from the oldest lunar basin to bring back to Earth.

The Chang’e-6 lander successfully touched down in the northeastern part of the South Pole-Aitken basin at 6.23am Beijing time on Sunday, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced.

“At 6.23 am on June 2, with the support of Queqiao-2 relay satellite, the Chang’e-6 lander and ascender successfully landed in the pre-selected landing area in the South Pole-Aitken basin on the far side of the moon,” the CNSA said.

“The mission has made technological breakthroughs, including lunar retrograde orbit design and control technology. With the support of Queqiao-2, it will go on to complete key tasks such as the intelligent, rapid sampling from the lunar far side and lunar surface take-off.

“The payloads onboard the Chang’e-6 lander will work as planned, and carry out scientific exploration. The international instruments, including the Negative Ions at the Lunar Surface developed by the European Space Agency and the Detection of Outgassing RadoN from France, will switch on very soon. The Italian passive laser retro-reflector has also been deployed.”

The lander will soon go through initial checks and begin using its robotic arm to drill and scoop up materials from the lunar surface, which are expected to weigh up to 2kg (4.4 pounds).

If returned, they will become the first samples ever retrieved from the moon’s mysterious far side, which always faces away from the Earth.

“When we finally get to analyse those samples in the lab, they will greatly advance our understanding of the moon’s history.”

Chang’e-6, which is named after the Chinese moon goddess, blasted off from the Wenchang spaceport on the southern island province of Hainan on May 3. Despite the rainy conditions, more than a hundred thousand people gathered on nearby beaches to watch the launch, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

Entering lunar orbit four days later, the 8.35-tonne spacecraft – which consists of a lander, ascender, orbiter, and return capsule – had been circling the moon since then, looking for the best spot and time to land.

On May 30, the lander and ascender separated from the orbiter and return capsule.

At 6.09am on Sunday, the lander fired its 7,500-newton-thrust engine to slow down and began to descend from about 15km (9 miles) above the lunar surface.

In this process, the cameras on the lander snapped pictures of the landing area and transmitted them to computers on the lander to identify possible hazards on the surface, such as large rocks, so that the craft could manoeuvre to avoid them.

At about 100 metres (328 feet) above the lunar surface, the combination suspended its descent and hovered for a moment to conduct accurate detection of smaller obstacles and determine the final landing spot before continuing to descend at a slower, steady speed.

As the craft came to just several metres above the surface, it shut off its engine and touched down on the lunar surface, becoming the only country to have soft landed on the far side for a second time.

The landing process was supported by Queqiao-2, a communications satellite orbiting the moon that relays signals between the spacecraft and mission control. Once the lander completes its two-day surface operations, the relay station will play a critical role in helping the ascender to blast off from the top of the lander, dock with the orbiter and transfer its cargo to the return capsule.

Chang’e-6 was originally made as a backup for the Chang’e-5 mission, which brought back rocks from the moon’s nearside in 2020.

Those samples led to a number of surprising findings about the moon’s composition and past because the rocks turned out to be much younger than those brought back by the US Apollo and Soviet Luna missions five decades ago, indicating that the moon was still active at a time when scientists had expected it to be dead.

With samples from the far side of the moon, scientists will be able to compare the chemical composition of rocks and find clues to why the moon’s two sides are so different, according to Quentin Parker, an astrophysicist from the University of Hong Kong.

“Samples from the South Pole-Aitken basin may also contain ancient materials ejected from deep within the mantle by the enormous impact that created the basin itself, which may tell us about the state of the moon when it was first formed around 4.5 billion years ago,” he said.

Once the samples are ready, both domestic and international researchers will be able to apply to study them, according to the space authority.

“I hope the University of Hong Kong might be lucky enough to get some of the very-different Chang’e-6 moon rock from the lunar far side for study,” Parker said.