• China’s lunar mission Chang’e-6 with rock and soil samples finally blasted off from the moon on June 4th, 2024.

• Samples collected are aimed to get back at the earth by early June of the year 2024.

China has successfully launched another five satellites into space. China’s first Mars rover known as the Chang’e-6 has launched from the moon with rock and soil samples from the far side. 

The launch was carried out in the early morning Beijing time on June 4, 2024, as announced by China National Space Administration.

Successful Liftoff

The ascender of the Chang’e-6 probe was launched and proceeded into a fixed orbit around the moon. 

This mission is to extend a probe to the far side of the moon which is almost impossible due to the bad surface and no direct communication is possible without the help of an orbiting relay satellite.

Collecting Samples

The Lunar orbiter Chang’e-6 was launched last month and landed on the moon on June 2. According to Xinhua News Agency, the space agency announced that the probe indeed took samples and kept them in a contain in the ascender as planned. 

These samples will be taken to a reentry capsule and hopefully will be splashed down on the Earth by around June 25, at the Inner Mongolia Autonomic Region of China.

Challenging Terrain

Speaking of the landing site, it is necessary to mark that it was the South Pole-Aitken Basin, an old impact crater. This basin is by far the largest on the moon and is older than 4 billion years. 

These attributes might offer valuable information on the moon’s past as other lunar features have suggested that the impact might have brought up elements from beneath the surface.

Growing Space Ambitions

Chang’e-6 is one of the many moon exploration plans conceived by China under its Chang’e fifth celestial body-themed program. This mission came after the Chang’e-5, a probe that drilled moon samples from the near side in 2020.