Wenchang / Hong Kong CNN — China launched an unmanned lunar mission on Friday with the goal of returning samples from the moon’s far side for the first time, possibly marking a significant step forward in the country’s ambitious space programme.
The Chang’e-6 probe, China’s most complicated robotic lunar mission to date, launched on a Long March-5 rocket from the Wenchang Space Launch Centre on the south Chinese island of Hainan, where space enthusiasts had congregated to witness the momentous occasion.
The launch marks the beginning of a mission that hopes to be a watershed moment in China’s quest to become a dominating space force, with ambitions to put people on the moon by 2030 and establish a research station on its south pole.
It comes as an increasing number of countries, including the United States, consider the geopolitical and scientific advantages of expanding lunar exploration in an increasingly competitive industry.
China’s planned 53-day mission would deposit the Chang’e-6 lander in a huge crater on the moon’s far side that never faces Earth. China became the first and only country to land on the moon’s far side with its Chang’e-4 mission in 2019.
Any far-side materials collected by the Chang’e-6 lander might help scientists retrace the development of the moon and the solar system as a whole, as well as providing critical data to further China’s lunar goals.
“The Chang’e-6 aims to achieve breakthroughs in the design and control technology of the moon’s retrograde orbit, intelligent sampling, take-off and ascent technologies, and automatic sample-return on the far side of the moon,” Ge Ping, deputy director of the China National Space Administration’s (CNSA) Centre of Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering, stated from the launch site last week.
Ambitious mission
The Chang’e-6 probe will be a critical test of China’s space capabilities as it works to realise leader Xi Jinping’s “eternal dream” of transforming the country into a space powerhouse.
China has made remarkable space advances in recent years, an area that has usually been spearheaded by the United States and Russia.
China became the first country in over four decades to make a robotic lunar landing in 2013 with the Chang’e programme, which began in 2007 and is named after the moon goddess of Chinese mythology. Tiangong, China’s own orbiting space station, was completed in 2022.
The highly challenging Chang’e-6 mission builds on Chang’e-4’s 2019 record of landing on the moon’s far side and Chang’e-5’s 2020 success in returning near-side lunar samples to Earth.
Chang’e-6 must now use the Queqiao-2 satellite, which was sent into lunar orbit in March, to communicate with Earth from the moon’s far side.
The probe consists of four components: an orbiter, a lander, an ascender, and a reentry module.
The Chang’e-6 lander will collect lunar dust and rocks after landing in the huge, about 2,500-kilometer-wide South Pole-Aitken basin, a crater produced over 4 billion years ago.
An ascender spacecraft would subsequently convey the samples to the lunar orbiter, where they would be transferred to the reentry module and returned to Earth by the mission.
The difficult mission “goes through virtually every step” that will be necessary for Chinese astronauts to land on the moon in the years ahead, according to James Head, a professor emeritus at Brown University who has cooperated with Chinese scientists guiding the expedition.
In addition to returning materials that might give “fundamental new insights into the origin and early history of the moon and solar system,” the mission acts as “robotic practice for these steps” to send people to and back from the moon, he added.
China intends to launch two more Chang-e missions as it approaches its goal of transporting people to the moon by 2030, followed by the construction of a research base on the lunar south pole, which is thought to contain water ice.
Chang’e-7, slated for 2026, will explore for resources on the moon’s south pole, while Chang’e-8, scheduled for around two years later, may look at ways to use lunar materials to prepare for the research base’s construction, according to Chinese authorities.
Competitive space
Friday’s launch comes as numerous nations scale up their lunar programmes, with an increasing emphasis on the possibilities for resource access and deeper space exploration that successful moon trips may provide.
Last year, India landed its first spacecraft on the moon, while Russia’s first lunar mission in decades failed when its Luna 25 probe collided with the lunar surface.
Japan became the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the moon in January, but its Moon Sniper lander ran out of power owing to an erroneous landing angle. The next month, IM-1, a NASA-funded mission developed by Texas-based private business Intuitive Machines, landed near the South Pole.
That landing, the first by a US-built spacecraft in nearly five decades, is one of many planned commercial missions to investigate the lunar surface before NASA seeks to send people there as soon as 2026 and construct a research base camp.
Last month, NASA administrator Bill Nelson appeared to recognise that China’s pace, as well as fears about its intentions, were fueling the American eagerness to return to the moon, decades after the Apollo-crewed flights.
“We suspect that most of their so-called civilian space programme is actually a military programme. I believe we are in a race,” Nelson told Congress last month, adding that he is concerned that China may try to prevent the US or other countries from entering particular lunar areas if they reach first.
China has long stated that it supports the peaceful use of space, and, like the United States, has sought to utilise its space expertise to foster international cooperation.
This time, China claims that the Chang’e-6 mission has research instruments or payloads from France, Italy, Pakistan, and the European Space Agency.
“China hopes to strengthen cooperation with its international counterparts and deepen international cooperation in the space field,” CNSA spokesperson Ge told reporters the day before the launch.
Source: Simone McCarthy and Marc Stewart, CNN
