The Chinese probe Chang’e 6 manages to land on the far side of the Moon

The Chinese probe Chang’e-6 managed to land on the far side of the Moon this Saturday, as confirmed by the state agency Xinhua. Launched on May 3, it is an automated exploration vehicle whose objective is to collect samples from the lunar surface and send them to Earth, loaded in a small return module that the ship has. The planned duration of the entire mission will be 53 days.

As detailed by the Chinese Space Agency, the spacecraft – named after the Chinese goddess of the Moon Chang’e – landed without problems on the surface of the Aitken Basin, a huge impact crater of irregular shape. about 2,000 kilometers in diameter and about 12 in maximum depth located on the hidden side of our satellite, that is, the one that is never visible from Earth.

Chinese scientists highlighted that this will be the first time that samples have been collected from this little-explored area of ​​the Moon. Chang’e 5, the previous mission in this series, which is part of the ambitious Chinese lunar exploration program, managed to send about two kilos of stones to Earth at the end of 2020. That ship landed on the Oceanus Procellarum, near Mons Rümker, on the visible side of the satellite.

Like its predecessor, Chang’e 6 consists of a lander and a sample return vehicle, riding on top of the former. It was launched by a Long March 5 rocket from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island.

Now that it is on the surface, the spacecraft will have deployed the solar panels that power its systems, installed on the lander, and will begin collecting lunar dust and rocks, in addition to carrying out other experiments. This process should be completed in two days, Xinhua said. The probe will employ two collection methods: a drill to collect samples from the subsurface and a robotic arm to take samples from the surface.

Once the charge is complete, it will attempt an unprecedented launch from the far side of the Moon. Experts consider that this side “has great potential for research because its craters are less covered by the ancient lava flows on the visible side,” as highlighted by the China Space Agency. The material collected can provide information about how the Moon formed.

China had already managed to land a spacecraft on the far side in 2019, the Chang’e 4, but it did not collect any samples.