China has once again made space history.
The country’s robotic Chang’e 6 mission brought material from the mysterious far side of the moon back to Earth on Tuesday (June 25) – something that has never been done before.
The milestone occurred at 2:07 a.m. EDT (06:07 a.m. GMT; 2:07 p.m. Beijing time) on Tuesday when Chang’e 6’s return capsule landed in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
Chang’e 6 consists of four modules: a lunar module, a return module, an orbiter and an ascender (a small rocket carried by the lunar module).
Related: China’s Chang’e 6 space probe finds long-sought particles on the far side of the moon
This hardware launched on May 3 and reached lunar orbit five days later. On June 1, the lander touched down in Apollo Crater, which lies in the South Pole-Aitken Basin (SPA), a 2,500-kilometer-wide impact zone on the far side of the Moon.
Using a shovel and a drill, the lander collected about 2 kilograms of lunar material. This valuable cargo was launched aboard the ascender on June 3 and rendezvoused with the mission’s orbiter a few days later.
The orbiter carrying the samples in its return capsule began its journey to Earth on or about June 21, according to NASA. (China has provided few official updates on Chang’e 6’s schedule and milestones.) The sample’s long journey ended early Tuesday with the landing of the return capsule.
Chang’e 6 is not the first successful lunar sample return mission. The Soviet Union, the United States, and China (with the Chang’e 5 mission in 2020) have all previously brought back material from Earth’s closest neighbor. However, these previous attempts all collected dirt and rock from the Earth-facing side of the Moon.
The far side, which is very different from the front, is more difficult to study. Because the far side faces away from Earth, a relay satellite is needed to communicate with spacecraft operating there. (China has launched two such relay satellites so far.) The far side is therefore little explored, and scientists are eager to see the samples from Chang’e 6 up close.
The material could help answer some difficult questions about the early history of the solar system. The SPA basin formed 4.26 billion years ago – a few hundred million years after most of the lunar craters were blasted out by asteroids and comets during a massive phase known as the Late Heavy Bombardment.
“Did the SPA form as part of the late heavy bombardment? Or was it a separate event? By determining the precise dates of the basin and the craters above it, we will be able to better understand the history of the Moon,” the nonprofit Planetary Society wrote in a description of the Chang’e-6 mission.
“This also has implications for understanding the origins of life on Earth,” the Planetary Society added. “It is possible that asteroids brought water and organic materials to Earth during the Late Heavy Bombardment. Understanding the timing and circumstances of this event is critical to unraveling our origin story.”
Chang’e 6 was China’s second mission to the far side of the Moon; in January 2019, Chang’e 4 landed a rover called Yutu 2 there, which is still active today. No other country has ever performed a soft landing of equipment on the far side of the Moon.
China’s lunar plans don’t end with Chang’e 6. The country plans to launch Chang’e 7 and Chang’e 8 in 2026 and 2028, respectively. The latter mission will help test technologies needed to establish a lunar base that China hopes to build near the water-ice-rich South Pole in the 2030s.