BANGKOK – China Chang’e 6 probe returned to Earth with rock and soil samples from the little-explored far side of the Moon, in a global first.
The probe landed in the Inner Mongolia region of northern China on Tuesday afternoon.
“I now declare that the Chang’e 6 lunar exploration mission has achieved complete success,” Zhang Kejian, director of the China National Space Administration, said in a televised news conference after the landing.
Chinese scientists predict the returned samples will include 2.5 million-year-old volcanic rocks and other materials that scientists hope will answer questions about geographic differences on the two sides of the Moon.
The near side is what is seen from Earth, and the far side faces outer space. The far side is also known for having mountains and impact craters, contrasting with the relatively flat expanses visible on the near side.
The probe landed in the Aitken Basin of the moon’s South Pole, an impact crater created more than 4 billion years ago. The samples scientists expect will likely come from different layers of the basin, which will contain traces of different geological events over its long chronology, such as when the moon was younger and had an active interior that could produce volcanic rock.
Although previous US and Soviet missions had collected samples from the near side of the Moon, the Chinese mission was the first to collect samples from the far side.
“This is a global first in the sense that it is the first time that someone has been able to take off from the far side of the Moon and bring back samples,” said Richard de Grijs, professor of astrophysics at Macquarie University in Australia.
The lunar program is part of a growing rivalry with the US – still the leader in space exploration – and others, including Japan and India. China has put its own space station into orbit and regularly send crews there.
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, sent a congratulatory message to the Chang’e team, saying it was a “historic achievement in our country’s efforts to become a space and technology power.”
The probe left Earth on May 3, and his journey lasted 53 days. The probe drilled into the core and removed rocks from the surface.
The samples “are expected to answer one of the most fundamental scientific questions in lunar scientific 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 published in Innovation Monday, a newspaper published in partnership with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
China in recent years has launched several successful missions to the Moon, collecting samples from the near side of the Moon with the Chang’e 5 probe previously.
They also hope the probe will return material that contains traces of past meteorite strikes from the Moon. This material could shed light on the early days of the solar system. There is a theory that the Moon acted as a kind of vacuum cleaner, attracting all the meteorites and debris from the previous era of the system so that they would not reach Earth, said de Grijs, who is also executive director of the International Institute of Space Sciences – Beijing.
China said it plans to share the samples with international scientists, although it did not say exactly in which countries.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
