Chinese space probe Chang’e-5 landed in Inner Mongolia early Thursday morning, bringing with it the first fresh samples of moon rocks and soil in more than four decades.
Packed with several kilograms of surface materials taken from an ancient lunar volcano, the probe’s return module landed around 2 am according to the China National Space Administration.
The recovery team will open and process the contents of the capsule before a plane transports the samples to a specially-built lab in Beijing for further analysis, the administration said in a statement, making China the third country in history after the US and Soviet Union to take lunar samples.
The Chang’e-5 probe, named after a Chinese moon goddess from ancient folklore, left earth on November 24 from a launchpad in Hainan.
Scientists last harvested moon samples in 1976 on the final Soviet lunar mission, which added to the hundreds of kilograms of materials collected by American astronauts during the Apollo voyages.
These samples, which are more than three billion years old, helped shape our understanding of the moon’s history but have also left questions about the satellite’s internal makeup which might be answered by more recent specimens according to observers.
Younger geological formations, roughly 1.2 billion years old, drew the Chinese mission to the Mons Rumker volcanic peak located in the Oceanus Procellarum - Ocean of Storms - which was likely created from an asteroid hitting the moon billions of years ago.
Scientists hope that these more recently formed rocks will reveal how the moon formed and how ancient volcanoes shaped its current topography.
This is the first time humans have visited the area around Mons Rumker, and only the third time a spacecraft has landed on the moon this century.
But the lunar probe is just one of several Chinese space missions to launch this year as leader Xi Jinping looks to make China a “great space power as soon as possible”, according to state media.
Beidou, the country’s answer to GPS, was completed earlier this year with the launch of a final satellite. Meanwhile Tianwen-1, a rover and orbiter en route to Mars, hurtled into space on July 23 and is expected to reach the red planet by early 2021.
If successful, Tianwen-1 will be the first Chinese mission to Mars and follows in the wake of a failed attempt several years ago.
