BEIJING – China's robotic Chang'e-5 mission today touched down on the Moon as part of its mission to bring back lunar rocks, the first attempt by any nation to retrieve samples from the planetary mass in more than 40 years.
The Chang'e-5 spacecraft "landed on the near side of the moon late Tuesday", the Xinhua news agency reported, citing the China National Space Administration.
Aided by a camera, spectrometer, radar, a scoop and a drill, the lander will spend the next few days shovelling up lunar rocks and soil to help scientists learn about the Moon's origins, formation and volcanic activity on its surface.
The Chinese probe will collect 2kg of surface material, or regolith, in Mons Rümker, a high volcanic complex in a nearside region known as Oceanus Procellarum, to be sent up to an orbiting vehicle.
The samples will then be returned to Earth in a capsule programmed to land in northern China's Inner Mongolia region.
If successful, China will be only the third country to have retrieved samples from the Moon, following the US and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s.
Beijing has poured billions into its military-run space programme, with hopes of having a crewed space station by 2022 and of eventually sending humans to the Moon.
The latest Chang'e-5 probe is among a slew of ambitious targets set by Beijing, which include creating a super-powerful rocket capable of delivering payloads heavier than those Nasa and private rocket firm SpaceX can handle, a lunar base, a permanently crewed space station, and a Mars rover. – AFP, December 1, 2020
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