A Chinese probe has delivered the first samples collected from the moon in more than 40 years, and its mission is still ongoing.
The Chang’e-5 sample recovery capsule floated into the snow-covered plains of Inner Mongolia, covering an odyssey that began less than a month ago with the launch of a nine-ton spacecraft from South China’s Wenchang Space Launch Center.
After a week of transit, the spacecraft’s orbiter sent a lander to the lunar surface on December 1. This lander stuffed up to two kilograms of rock and dirt into an ascent vehicle within two days and then sent the ascent vehicle on its planned rendezvous with the orbiter. As soon as the goods were transferred to the return capsule, the ascent vehicle returned to its sinking on the lunar surface.
Meanwhile, the orbiter fired its engines to return to Earth and make the crucial shipment. It released the sample return capsule and then performed an evasive maneuver to return to space – possibly for another mission that has yet to be disclosed.
The return pod slowed its descent with an initial ricochet from the upper layers of the atmosphere over the Arabian Sea, followed by a parachute-assisted jump to the Siziwang Banner in Inner Mongolia.
China’s state news agency Xinhua quoted the Chinese space agency as saying the capsule landed on December 17 at 01:59 a.m. Beijing time (1759 UTC, December 16).
The Chang’e-5 recovery team first spotted the probe on infrared aerial photographs and quickly reached the construction site. The video from the scene showed the capsule upright and apparently in good condition, with a Chinese flag nearby for the photo operation.
The capsule will not be opened until it is returned to a laboratory in Beijing. Assuming the samples are intact, Chinese scientists and their international staff could study the material for decades.
The delivery of the samples is an amazing technical achievement for China’s space program, which previously sent orbiters and two sets of robotic landers and rovers to the moon. Bringing a probe back from the moon is more difficult. This is the first shipment from the moon since 1976, when the Luna 24 robotic probe returned lunar samples to the Soviet Union.
NASA’s Apollo astronauts collected hundreds of kilograms of lunar material between 1969 and 1972, but the US space agency’s next opportunity isn’t expected until it sends an Artemis crew to the lunar surface in 2024 at the earliest.
Beyond the technical achievements, the Chang’e-5 lunar samples could throw new rays of light on the final phases of lunar geology and the development of the earth-moon system.
The lander landed in part of Oceanus Procellarum, which is said to have formed volcanically 1.2 billion years ago. This would make the specimens of Chang’e-5 the youngest stones ever to have been collected on the moon.
According to Xinhua, President Xi Jinping of China congratulated the entire Chang’e-5 mission team. Across the world, NASA Assistant Science Administrator Thomas Zurbuchen told the Chinese team in a tweet that “the international science community is celebrating its successful Chang’e 5 mission”.
“These samples will help to reveal the secrets of our Earth-Moon system and to gain new knowledge about the history of our solar system,” said Zurbuchen.
Main image: Chang’e-5’s soot-striped sample recovery capsule sits in the middle of the Inner Mongolia snow with a Chinese flag nearby. Credit: CNSA via CCTV
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