BEIJING (AP) — China says a spaceship Carrying rock and soil samples from the far side of the moon, it has lifted off from the moon’s surface to begin its journey back to Earth.
The Chang’e-6 probe’s ascent lamp took off Tuesday morning Beijing time and entered a preset orbit around the moon, the China National Space Administration said.
The Chang’e-6 probe was launched last month and its lander landed on the far side of the moon on Sunday.
Xinhua News Agency quoted the space agency as saying that the spacecraft had stored the samples it collected in a container in the probe’s riser as planned.
The container will be transferred to a return capsule that will return to Earth around June 25 in the deserts of China’s Inner Mongolia region.
Missions to the far side of the moon are more difficult because it is not pointed toward Earth, requiring a relay satellite to maintain communications. The terrain is also rougher, with fewer flat areas for landing.
Xinhua said the probe’s landing site was the South Pole-Aitken Basin, an impact crater that formed more than 4 billion years ago, is 13 kilometers (8 miles) deep and 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles) in diameter.
It is the oldest and largest of such craters on the moon, and thus could provide the earliest information about it, Xinhua said, adding that the massive impact may have ejected material from deep below the surface.
The mission is the sixth in the Chang’e lunar exploration program, named after a Chinese moon goddess. It is the second designed to bring back monsters, after the Change 5that did this from close range in 2020.
The moon program is part of a growing rivalry with the US – still the leader in space exploration – and others, including Japan and India. China has regularly put its own space station into orbit sends crews over there.
The emerging world power strives for it to put someone on the moon before 2030, which would make it the second country after the United States to do so. America plans to land astronauts on the moon again – for the first time in more than 50 years – via NASA the target date has been postponed until 2026 earlier this year.
