This article is published in Aviation Week & Space Technology and is free to read until Jul 03, 2024. If you want to read more articles from this publication, please click the link to subscribe.
SINGAPORE—The Chang’e 6 mission's return module has landed back on Earth after a 53-day lunar mission, bringing back lunar samples from the far side of the Moon for the first time in the history of space exploration.
The module landed at Siziwang Banner in China’s Inner Mongolia region on June 25 at 2.07 p.m. Beijing time.
It has not been confirmed that all 2 kg (4.4 lb.) of lunar samples were successfully returned. The module is being airlifted to Beijing where the contents will be extracted and undergo analysis and research, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA).
The Chang’e 6 spacecraft was launched from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on May 3 and landed on June 2 at the Apollo crater in the Moon's South Pole-Aitken basin.
Kang Guohua, professor of Aerospace Engineering at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, told state newspaper Global Times that since the South Pole-Aitken basin is the oldest and deepest large impact basin on the Moon, the soil can provide "critical clues" about the formation and evolution of the solar system
“The successful execution of the Chang'e-6 mission has achieved breakthroughs in key technologies such as retrograde lunar orbit design and control, rapid intelligent sampling on the lunar far side, and ascent from the lunar far side,” Kang added.
A key enabler for the Chang’e 6 is the Queqiao-2 communications relay satellite. Following the Chang’e 6 mission, CNSA said Queqiao-2 will use its extreme ultraviolet camera, arrayed neutral atom imager, and an Earth-Moon Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) experiment system to collect data from the Moon and deep space.
Chang’e 6 was carrying European Space Agency (ESA)'s lunar surface ion composition analyzer, radon detection instrument from France and Italy's laser corner reflector. ESA engineer Neil Melville-Kenney has said ESA will meet CNSA in October to discuss further collaboration in space missions.
The Wolf Amendment in 2011 has prevented NASA and its Chinese counterparts from communicating with each other, but in November 2023 NASA certified to Congress that its researchers could study samples from China's Chang'e 5 mission without harming national security and urged scientists to apply to the Chinese for access. In 2020 Chang’e 5 collected samples from the near side of the Moon.
CNSA is yet to say if it will make samples collected by Chang’e 6 available to scientists from other countries.
Related Content
