China lands uncrewed spacecraft lands on Moon’s far side – elevating Beijing’s status amid new global space race

China landed an unmanned spacecraft on the far side of the moon on Sunday, overcoming a major hurdle in its groundbreaking mission to retrieve the world’s first rock and soil samples from the moon’s dark hemisphere.

The landing raises China’s status in a global rush to the moon, where countries including the United States hope to exploit lunar minerals to support long-duration astronaut missions and moon bases in the coming decade.

The Chang’e-6 craft, equipped with an array of tools and its own launcher, touched down at 6:23 a.m. in a giant impact crater called the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the space-facing side of the moon. Beijing time (2223 GMT), the China National Space Administration said.

The mission “entails many technical innovations, high risks and great difficulties,” the agency said in a statement on its website. “The Chang’e-6 lander payload will operate as planned and conduct scientific exploration missions.”

The successful mission is China’s second to the far side of the moon, a region no other country has reached. The side of the moon that continually faces away from Earth is riddled with deep and dark craters, making communications and robotic landing operations more challenging.

Image taken from a video animation at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center on June 2, 2024

Given these challenges, lunar and space experts involved in the Chang’e-6 mission described the landing phase as a time when failure is most likely to occur.

‘Landing on the other side of the moon is very difficult because you have no line-of-sight communication, you have to rely on many links in the chain to control what is happening, or you have to automate what is happening. is ongoing,” said Neil Melville-Kenney, a technical officer at the European Space Agency who is working with China on one of the Chang’e-6 payloads.

“Automation is very difficult, especially at high latitudes, because you have long shadows, which can be very confusing for landers,” Melville added.

The Chang’e-6 probe was launched on May 3 on China’s Long March 5 rocket from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on southern Hainan Island and reached the moon’s vicinity about a week later before tightening its orbit to preparation for a landing.

The Chang’e 6 moon probe and the Long March-5 Y8 launch vehicle combination sit atop the launch pad at the Wenchang Space Launch Site in Hainan Province on May 3, 2024

Chang’e-6 marks the world’s third moon landing this year: Japan’s SLIM lander landed in January, followed the next month by a lander from US startup Intuitive Machines.

The other countries that have sent spacecraft to Earth’s nearest neighbor are the then Soviet Union and India. The United States is the only country to put men on the moon since 1969.

Using a shovel and drill, the Chang’e-6 lander will collect 2 kg of lunar material in two days and return it to Earth.

The samples will be transferred to a rocket booster atop the lander, which will launch back into space, dock with another spacecraft in lunar orbit and return, with a landing in China’s Inner Mongolia region around June 25 is expected.

If all goes according to plan, the mission will provide China with an impeccable record of the moon’s 4.5 billion year history and new clues about the formation of the solar system. It will also allow unprecedented comparison between the dark, unexplored region and the better understood, Earth-facing side of the moon.

A simulation laboratory for the Chang’e-6 probe will develop and verify sampling strategies and equipment control procedures, China’s official Xinhua news agency said. A full replica of the sampling area will be used, based on exploration results of the environment, rock distribution and conditions of the lunar soil around the landing site.

China’s moon strategy includes the first astronaut landing around 2030 in a program that considers Russia a partner. In 2020, China conducted its first lunar sample return mission with Chang’e-5, retrieving samples from the near side of the moon.

The American Artemis program envisions a manned moon landing at the end of 2026 or later. NASA is working with space agencies including Canada, Europe and Japan, whose astronauts will join U.S. crews on an Artemis mission.

Artemis relies heavily on private companies, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, whose Starship rocket this decade aims to attempt the first astronaut landing since NASA’s last Apollo mission in 1972.

On Saturday, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa canceled a private mission around the moon that he had paid for that would have used SpaceX’s Starship, citing uncertainties in the rocket’s development schedule.

Boeing and NASA have postponed the first crewed launch of Starliner, a long-delayed capsule intended to become the second U.S. space taxi to low Earth orbit.