After a three-year delay China will launch its first sample-return mission to the moon Tuesday - the third nation to do so.
The Chang'e-5 robotic lunar exploration mission - a lunar lander and a sample-return vehicle - will blastoff aboard a Long March-5 Y5 heavy-lift launch vehicle from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on Hainan Island. The craft will land on the Mons Rumker region of the Oceanus Procellarum, or Ocean of Storms, lava plain Nov. 27.
The lander will drill into the moon's surface and bring its samples to an ascender on the sample-return vehicle. The ascender will liftoff and dock with an orbiting module which will return to Earth.
The sample-return vehicle will head back to Earth either Dec. 16 or Dec. 17 carrying with it some 2,000 grams (71 ounces) of lunar soil and material.
Chang'e-5 will be the world's first lunar sample-return mission since the Soviet Union's Luna 24 in 1976. The U.S. is the only other country to have returned lunar soil and rocks to the Earth.
Mons Rümker is located in the northwest region of the near side of the moon. It was selected because it contains geological samples some 1.21 billion years old, which is far younger than the Apollo mission samples that were between 3.1 billion years and 4.4 billion years old.
"The Apollo-Luna sample zone of the moon, while critical to our understanding, was undertaken in an area that comprises far less than half the lunar surface," planetary scientist at Brown University James Head said.
Lunar scientists have been encouraging return missions to address fundamental questions remaining from earlier explorations.
Over the next 10 years, China plans to establish a robotic moon station to conduct unmanned exploration in the south polar region.
It will launch the Chang'e-6, 7 and 8 missions through the 2020s before it lands the first Chinese astronaut on the moon.
The Long March-5 carrier rocket is China's largest launch vehicle. It successfully launched China's first Mars mission, Tianwen-1, July 23. China plans to retrieve soil and rock samples from Mars by 2030.
