China returned to the moon Tuesday, landing a spacecraft on an unmanned mission to collect lunar rocks, according to numerous reports.
It was the communist nation’s second trip to Earth’s closest neighbor since January 2019.
The China National Space Administration announced midmorning that the Chang’e-5 craft had landed successfully on the moon’s surface.
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The mission, expected to last 14 days, is the first of a series of trips by Beijing to study volcanic activity on the moon, according to reports.
The goal is to determine when volcanoes were last active on the lunar surface.
The current mission makes China the third country to bring back samples from the moon, the other two being the United States and the Soviet Union, which did it in the 1960s and 1970s.
The mission will robotically gather about 4 pounds of the moon’s surface rocks in a particular unexplored region and bring the materials back to Earth.
By comparison, more than 800 pounds of lunar material was retrieved by the astronauts in both the American Apollo and Soviet Luna programs.
The moon samples are expected to make reentry to Earth in the region of Mongolia and will be stored at the Chinese Academy of Sciences National Astronomical Observatory of China in Beijing, according to NPR.
The Chinese craft lifted off Nov. 24 from Wenchang Space Launch Center on Hainan Island, China, and reached orbit around the moon over the weekend, reports said.
A lander descended and touched down on the near side of the moon early Tuesday in a region called Mons Rümker, an area of Oceanus Procellarum once believed to be highly volcanic, according to London’s British Broadcasting Corporation.
China’s newest space mission had been widely written about in recent weeks by multiple news outlets; and the craft’s arrival on the moon was confirmed on Twitter by NASA administrator Thomas Zurbuchen.
“When the samples collected on the Moon are returned to Earth, we hope everyone will benefit from being able to study this precious cargo that could advance the international science community,” he wrote.
China made history in January 2019 after becoming the first nation to land a spacecraft on the far side of the moon. Before that, the country landed the Chang’e-3 on the moon in 2013.
Tuesday’s landing was touted throughout the morning on Chinese state media. It was later confirmed by BBC and other sources including NPR and The Verge.
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