The Chinese probe Chang’e 6 is already on the way back to Earth after fulfilling its objective of collecting samples from the far side of the Moon, a milestone not achieved so far in the space race, not even by the United States. … Joined. The device is expected to land on our planet at the end of this month. Chinese scientists believe that the mission could offer more clues about how the Earth satellite was formed.
The Asian giant’s ship has only spent two days on the Moon. It landed this Sunday in the immense Aitken basin, one of the largest known impact craters in the solar system. Discovered in 2010, it is located at the South Pole and is about 2,500 kilometers long and 13 kilometers deep. To collect lunar dust and rocks, it has used a drill to drill into the surface and a robotic arm. China had already placed a spacecraft on the far side of the Moon in 2019 – so called because it is not visible from Earth – but did not collect any samples.
Chang’e 6, which took off on May 3 from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Center in the southern province of Hainan, consists of four parts: an orbiter, a lander, an elevator and a reentry module. The elevator’s mission was to transport the lunar samples collected by the lander to the lunar orbiter. Once there, these were transferred to the reentry module, which is responsible for bringing them back for analysis. The probe also had on board several scientific teams from the European Space Agency (ESA), the French National Center for Space Studies (CNES), Italy and Pakistan.
Rivalry with the United States
Unlike the problems that NASA and the private companies with which it collaborates are having, which barely manage to place their devices on the Moon, China continues to show absolute effectiveness in its lunar missions. Chang’e 3, 4 and 5 landed on the moon without major problems in 2013, 2019 and 2020 respectively. The first made the country the third to be able to land on the moon after the United States and the Soviet Union. The second represented the aforementioned milestone of placing a ship on the far side and the last one collected 1.7 kilos of samples from the lunar surface. In his analyzes he directly detected the presence of water on the Moon for the first time.
The Chang’e program – named after a goddess who according to Chinese tradition lives on the Moon – began in 2007 with Chang’e 1, which orbited the satellite for a year and a half until it crashed in a controlled manner. in March 2009. In the coming years, Chang’e 7 will explore the south pole of the Moon in search of water and Chang’e 8 will try to establish the viability of building a base there in 2030. The United States is wary of these plans to hide, according to Washington, military objectives and to try to dominate space.
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