By Eduardo Baptista
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s Chang’e-6 lunar probe landed on Tuesday in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region, making the country the first to bring back samples from the far side of the moon.
The reentry capsule touched down at 2:07 pm Beijing time (6:07 am GMT), according to state broadcaster CCTV, carrying lunar soil collected earlier this month by the probe after a successful landing at the Moon’s South Pole-Aitken Basin, a impact crater. on the side of the Moon that always faces away from the Earth.
Shortly after the capsule landed, Zhang Kejian, head of the China National Space Administration, announced the successful completion of the Chang’e-6 lunar mission. Chinese President Xi Jinping said the mission’s completion was a “historic achievement” in China’s quest to become a space and science powerhouse.
The Chang’e-6 probe was launched on May 3 on a Long March 5 rocket from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on the southern island of Hainan. The samples will be airlifted to Beijing for analysis, according to CCTV.
While it is not yet known whether the planned 2kg of samples were successfully returned, whatever the quantity, the samples will be closely analyzed by Chinese and foreign scientists, who believe they will reveal new details about the formation of the Earth, the Moon and of the planet. solar system.
Samples from the Chang’e-5 mission, which returned lunar samples from the near side of the Moon, led to the discovery of new minerals and more precise ranges for the Moon’s geological age.
The success of the Chang’e-6 mission could give China’s lunar and space exploration program, already in close competition with the United States, greater influence among foreign governments and scientists.
China’s recovery of samples from the far side of the Moon comes at a time when the exploitation of lunar resources and the militarization of space have become increasingly pressing issues, shaped by geopolitical tensions.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson this year expressed concern about China’s lunar exploration program and described an intensifying “space race” between the two superpowers.
“I’m happy that there’s been a resurgence of this (space) race, but of course I’d like to see us racing side by side and together,” said Neil Melville-Kenney, technical officer at the European Space Agency (ESA). ) who is working with Chinese researchers on one of Chang’e-6’s payloads.
While the European Union and China are at odds over a wide range of geopolitical issues, from trade to the war in Ukraine, European space agencies and scientists are working closely with their Chinese counterparts on data and samples collected by China’s lunar missions.
“We know that (the far side of the Moon) is literally a different place, it’s made of different materials than the near side of the Moon, it has a different history… it’s really of fundamental scientific importance to get these samples back,” Melville said. Kenney.
The engineer added that ESA will meet with the China National Space Administration in October to discuss further collaboration.
“This collaboration that we have at the moment (with China) is a small step, this was started a long time ago, perhaps the situations were a little different. In the future, I hope there will be more collaboration”, he added.
(Reporting by Eduardo Baptista; editing by Jacqueline Wong and Gerry Doyle)
