China probe returns carrying samples from moon’s far side
Deutsche Welle :
China’s lunar probe landed safely in the remote steppes of northern China’s border region with Mongolia on Tuesday.
It returns bearing the first samples ever taken of rock and soil from the largely unexplored far side of the moon, the side that is never visible from Earth.
“I now declare that the Chang’e 6 Lunar Exploration Mission achieved complete success,” Zhang Kejian, the director of the China National Space Administration agency said in a televised news conference shortly after the landing. State TV carried live footage of the vessel touching down.
China’s President Xi Jinping sent a message of congratulations to the Chang’e-6 team, saying that the mission was a “landmark achievement in our country’s efforts at becoming a space and technological power.”
The samples were set to be transported by air to Beijing for further study, according to Chinese broadcaster CCTV.
Chinese scientists anticipate that the samples will include volcanic rock that’s more than 2 million years old and other materials. Researchers hope to learn more about the differences between the two sides of the moon. They had hoped to collect roughly 2 kilograms of samples.
The probe left Earth on May 3 for what was ultimately a 53-day mission. It both scooped up rocks from the surface and also drilled into the ground for deeper-rooted samples.
The far side of the moon is known to have mountains and impact craters, whereas the side visible from Earth is relatively flat.
Past US and Soviet moon landing missions have gathered samples from the near side of the moon, but only from there.
The payload is “expected to answer one of the most fundamental scientific questions in lunar research: what geological activity is responsible for the differences between the two sides?” said Zongyu Yue, a geologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in a statement issued in a journal supported by the academy.
Among other things, scientists are hoping to find evidence of past meteorite strikes.
Longer term, the prospect of identifying usable reserves of ice, and therefore water, on the moon are particularly enticing for the future of space exploration. The resource, crucial to any crewed space mission, is very heavy and cannot practically be launched out of earth’s high-gravity atmosphere in large quantities.