The Chang’e-6 probe was successfully launched on May 3, 2024 at the Wenchang Aerospace Launch Site in Wenchang City, Hainan Province, China.
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China’s Chang’e-6 lunar probe returned to Earth on Tuesday, bringing back the first samples from the unexplored far side of the moon.
According to Google Translate, the return capsule landed in the Inner Mongolia region of northern China at 2:07 pm local time. Latest news from China National Space Administration (China National Space Administration) declared the mission a “complete success.”
Chang’e 6 returned to Earth with soil collected from the South Pole-Aitken Basin, a giant crater on the lunar hemisphere that always faces away from Earth.
The probe landed on the moon on June 2, lifted off again on June 4, and returned to Earth after orbiting the moon for 13 days. The Chang’e-6 mission took a total of 53 days, starting on May 3 from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on Hainan Island, off China’s south coast.
The detector will be flown to Beijing, where the cabin will be opened and the sample container removed.
Last August, India safely landed its Chandrayaan-3 mission on the unexplored South Pole of the moon, and Chang’e-6 returned a few months later. The so-called “dark side” of the moon has long attracted people’s attention – it always disappears from Earth’s view because it is tidally locked and completes a complete rotation within the time it takes to orbit the Earth. In 1959, the Soviet Union’s Luna 3 spacecraft took the first image of the far side of the moon.
According to a Google translation of the leaders’ speech, Chinese President Xi Jinping congratulated the National Space Administration on “another landmark achievement in building my country into a powerful aerospace and technological power.” Shared by space institute.
Chang’e 6 The predecessor of Chang’e-5In 2020, it successfully returned after unfurling the first Chinese flag on the moon. It has set out to collect about 2 kilograms of lunar regolith. The feat made China the third country at the time to achieve lunar sampling, after the United States and the Soviet Union, although it is unclear what it managed to bring back.
Beijing’s ambitions are broader, having previously outlined plans to land manned space missions by 2030.
National space programs have long been a symbol of international prestige, culminating in the Cold War-era competition between the United States and the Soviet Union to pioneer and develop space flight capabilities. Washington scored a crucial victory in July 1969 when astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon.
The space program remains a fixture of massive public interest and spending, with world government funding for such programs set to reach a record $117 billion by 2023. According to Statista data. Still, America’s famed NASA has had to tighten its budget requirements.
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