Space travel
Report: Chinese probe successfully lands on moon
On May 3, the “Chang’e 6” began its 53-day lunar mission. Photo
© Guo Cheng/Xinhua/dpa
The lunar mission “Chang’e 6” is intended to bring rock samples from the far side of the moon to Earth for the first time. It would be a milestone for the Chinese space program.
According to government sources, China has for the first time Land the probe on the far side of the moon to collect rock samples. As the state news agency Xinhua reported, citing the Chinese space agency, a landing module of the space probe named “Chang’e 6” after the Chinese moon goddess “successfully” landed on the surface.
The mission is considered a milestone for China’s ambitious space program. It would be the first time in human history that soil and rock samples would be brought to Earth from the far side of the moon.
The landing site of the “Chang’e 6” is the South Pole-Aitken Basin, the largest and oldest impact crater on the moon. According to the science magazine “Science”, this has a diameter of 2500 kilometers and is up to eight kilometers deep. Scientists have long wanted to obtain rock samples from this region.
Already the sixth Chinese moon mission since 2007
On May 3, “Chang’e 6” began its 53-day lunar mission. According to the plan, the soil samples will reach Earth around June 25. This is the sixth lunar mission by the Chinese since 2007. Most recently, “Chang’e 5” brought samples from the front of the moon to Earth for examination in 2020. Before that, in 2019, “Chang’e 4” was the first rover to land on the far side of the moon and explore the terrain there.
Attempts to land on the moon are considered extremely difficult. In the recent past, several lunar probes from India, Israel, Japan and Russia failed to reach their destination as planned.