China has made space history again.
The country’s robotic Chang’e 6 mission sent material from the mysterious far side of the moon to Earth on Tuesday (June 25) – something that had never been done before.
The milestone moment occurred at 2:07 a.m. EDT (6:07 a.m. GMT; 2:07 p.m. Beijing time) on Tuesday, when the Chang’e 6 return capsule landed in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
Chang’e 6 consists of four modules: a lunar lander, a return capsule, an orbiter and a riser (a small rocket carried by the lander).
Related: China’s Chang’e 6 spacecraft finds long-sought particles on the far side of the moon
This hardware was launched on May 3 and arrived in lunar orbit five days later. On June 1, the lander touched down in the Apollo Crater, which is located in the South Pole-Aitken Basin (SPA), a 1,500-mile-wide impact zone on the far side of the moon.
The lander collected about 2 kilograms of lunar material using a shovel and a drill. This precious payload was launched aboard the riser on June 3 and rendezvoused with the mission’s orbiter a few days later.
According to NASA, the orbiter, which carried the samples in its return capsule, began heading toward Earth on or around June 21. (China has provided few official updates on Chang’e 6’s timeline and milestones.) The monster’s long journey came to an end early Tuesday with the landing of the return capsule.
Chang’e 6 isn’t the first successful lunar sample return mission; the Soviet Union, the United States, and China (with the Chang’e 5 mission in 2020) have all returned material from Earth’s nearest neighbor. But those previous attempts all collected dirt and rocks on the near side of the moon, the one that always faces Earth.
The other side, which is very different from the nearby one, is more difficult to explore. Because the far side faces away from Earth, a relay satellite is needed to communicate with spacecraft operating there. (China has launched two such relay satellites so far.) The other side has therefore been little studied, so scientists are eager to get a closer look at Chang’e 6’s samples.
The material could help answer some tough questions about the early history of the solar system. The SPA basin, for example, formed 4.26 billion years ago – a few hundred million years after most of the lunar craters, which were blown away by asteroids and comets in a violent streak known as the Late Heavy Bombardment.
“Was the SPA formed as part of the Late Heavy Bombardment? Or was it a separate event? Obtaining precise dates for the basin and the craters above it will help us better understand the moon’s history,” the nonprofit wrote Planetary Society. in a description of the Chang’e 6 mission.
“This also has implications for understanding the origins of life on Earth,” the Planetary Society added. “It is possible that asteroids carried water and organic material to Earth during the Late Heavy Bombardment. Understanding the timing and circumstances of this event is critical to unraveling our origin story.”
Chang’e 6 was China’s second mission to the far side of the moon; in January 2019, Chang’e 4 landed a rover there called Yutu 2, which is still active. No other country has landed any hardware on the far side of the moon.
China’s moon plans don’t end with Chang’e 6. The country plans to launch Chang’e 7 and Chang’e 8 in 2026 and 2028, respectively. This latest mission will help test technologies needed to establish a moon base, which China plans to build near the water-ice-rich South Pole in the 2030s.