China’s historic Chang’e-6 lunar probe made a successful landing on the far side of the moon on Sunday. The groundbreaking mission aims to collect soil and rock samples from the moon’s unexplored place and to bring them back to Earth for the first time in human history.
According to the China National Space Administration (CNSA), the spacecraft landed at the designated site within the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) Basin on Sunday morning.
The CNSA further said that the “combination then hovered about 100 meters above the safe landing area and used a laser 3D scanner to detect obstacles on the lunar surface to select the final landing site before a slow vertical descent”.
The Chang’e-6 mission, which commenced on May 3, consists of an orbiter, a returner, a lander and an ascender. If all work as per the plan, this mission will provide China with a pristine record of the moon’s 4.5 billion-year history and offer new insights into the formation of our solar system.
The mission will also compare the dark, unexplored region of the moon with the more familiar Earth-facing side and promises to explore hidden secrets about lunar geology and evolution.
The moon’s South Pole–Aitken basin, is one of the largest known impact craters in the entire solar system and the challenge is the backside of the moon perpetually faces away from Earth, creating communication hurdles and making robotic landing operations more complex.