CHINA unlocked a new milestone in its global space ambitions after its very own Chang’e-6 probe landed on the far side of the moon on Sunday, the 2nd of June.
The spacecraft sent back data hours after the historic landing.
Chinese research personnel are currently analyzing the samples.
It was a landmark moment for China as no other country has dared to reach that part of the moon since it is difficult to establish communications because it never faces the Earth.
The mission aims to retrieve rocks and soil from the lunar surface and uncover a “treasure chest” of mysteries from the rarely explored side of the Earth’s only natural satellite.
The historic mission will not only open doors for technological advancement but also elevate China’s space power status in the era of a competitive global space race.
“No one has ever seen the far side of the moon from the Earth, only in the space age, when we’ve been able to put satellites in there. And now China has landed on the far side and is going to bring samples back. And the far side is very different than the near side, nobody knows why. And so, these samples will help us to understand that, and that may sound arcane, but it really is important, because it’s our early history. It’s also essentially the ‘Rosetta Stone for planetary history’, and also the model for how we understand other planetary bodies. So, it’s an incredible, incredible landing and sample collection treasure chest and we hope to be able to in fact have them return to the Earth,” according to Prof. James Head, Geological Sciences, Brown University.
It is the first time in human history that a country successfully collected samples from the far side of the moon.
