China Makes History with Launch of Chang’e-6 Spacecraft to Far Side of Moon

SURABAYA INDEPENDENT VOICE – China on Friday, May 3, 2024, launched an unmanned spacecraft on a nearly two-month mission to retrieve rocks and soil from the far side of the moon.

The mission makes China the first country to undertake such an ambitious undertaking.

The Long March-5, China’s largest rocket, was launched at 17:27 Beijing time (0927 GMT) from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on the southern island of Hainan with a weighted Chang’e-6 probe more than 8 metric tons.

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Chang’e-6 is tasked with landing in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the Moon, which always faces away from Earth, after which it will receive samples back and forth.

The announcement marks another milestone in China’s lunar and space exploration programs.

“It remains a mystery to us how China could develop such an ambitious and successful program in such a short time,” said Pierre-Yves Meslin, a French researcher working on one of the scientific objectives during the Chang e-6 mission. .

In 2018, Chang’e-4 brought China’s first unmanned moon landing, also on the far side.

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In 2020, Chang’e-5 marked the first time humans sampled the moon in 44 years, and Chang’e-6 could make China the first country to sample the side of ” hidden” of the moon.

The launch was attended by scientists, diplomats and space agency officials from France, Italy, Pakistan and the European Space Agency, all of whom were responsible for exploring the moon aboard the Chang’ e-6.

“However, no US agency has applied for a payload bay,” said Ge Ping, deputy director of the China National Space Administration’s (CNSA) Lunar Space and Exploration Program.

China is prohibited by US law from doing any cooperation with the US space agency, NASA.

“There’s a secret on the other side of the moon. “Maybe it’s because we can’t really see it, we’ve never seen it except with robotic explorers or the very small number of people who have ever been on the other side of it,” said Neil Melville-Kenney, a technical officer at ESA who worked with Chinese researchers on one of the Chang’e-6 payloads.