China Launches Record-Breaking Lunar Mission

The Chang’e-6 spacecraft was launched on May 3, 2024, from Wenchang Space Base on the coast of Hainan, China, to collect and deliver to Earth rock samples collected on the back side of the Moon.

Chang’e-6, weighing 8.35 tons, was launched into orbit by the Long March-5 rocket, China’s largest and most powerful spacecraft. This is the first attempt to get samples from the back side of the Moon.

“The unfolding mission will be much more challenging, responsible, and exciting than Chang’e-5, which landed on the back side of the moon (in 2020 – ed.) and will definitely be recorded, whether it ends with a great success or failure, as a symbol of bold innovation in the history of mankind’s exploration of the last frontier,” the China Space Agency (CNSA) said in a statement. “Prior to this mission, humanity had completed 10 missions that delivered lunar samples, but all of them were collected from the near side of the Moon.”

Chang’e-6 plans to land near the South Pole, the Aitken Basin, and this is a very important step in China’s space program, which is developing at a tremendous pace.

“It remains a mystery to us how China managed to develop such an ambitious and successful program in such a short time,” Pierre-Yves Meslin, a French researcher working on the mission, told Reuters. China’s recent successes in space led to Chang’e-4 making China’s first (unmanned) moon landing in 2018. In 2020, Chang’e-5 delivered lunar soil samples to Earth, something that hasn’t happened in 44 years.