China's lunar probe has returned to Earth carrying rock samples from the unexplored side of the moon. The Chang'e-6 landed on Tuesday in the Inner Mongolian desert after a nearly two-month mission, China's official Xinhua news agency reported. BBC.
China last brought back rock samples from the Earth-facing side of the Moon in December 2020. The special feature of the current mission is that it brought with it for the first time a sample of lunar rocks collected by a probe on the far side of the Moon, not visible from Earth.
Access to the far side is technically difficult due to its remoteness, difficult terrain, giant craters and few flat surfaces.
Researchers are interested in this less-explored site because it is hoped that it contains traces of ice from which water, oxygen and hydrogen can be extracted, and they believe that analyzing the samples could provide new information about the formation of the moon.
The probe returned 2.5 billion-year-old volcanic rocks, but the samples may also bear traces of early meteorite impacts, including…
It will also be possible to draw conclusions about the formation of the solar system.
Chang'o-6 is the sixth lunar mission launched by China since 2007. Five years ago, Chang'o-4 was the first spacecraft to land on the far side of the moon. Chang'o-6, named after the Chinese moon goddess, was launched on May 3 and landed in the Antarctica-Aitken Basin on June 2.
Beijing has pumped huge resources into its space program over the past decade to catch up with the United States and Russia. They aim to send a crew to the moon by 2030, and eventually plan to build a base on the celestial body. The United States also plans to send astronauts to the moon by 2026 on the Artemis 3 mission.
Analysts say the next space race will not only be about transporting humans to the moon, but also about who will be able to claim and control lunar resources.
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