BEIJING: China’s Chang’e-5 spacecraft, which successfully returned to Earth this week, recovered about 1,731 grams of samples from the moon, the country’s space agency said on Saturday.
The samples were transferred to Chinese research teams on Saturday morning.
The scientists will carry out the storage, analysis and research of the first samples in the country collected from the extraterrestrial object, said the China National Space Administration (CNSA).
The return capsule of the Chang’e-5 spacecraft landed in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in the early hours of Thursday, bringing evidence collected from the moon.
The Chang’e-5 mission marks a successful completion of China’s current three-stage orbital and landing exploration program and the return of tests begun in 2004.
It was the country’s first attempt to bring the moon’s evidence in more than 40 years after the United States sent astronauts to the moon to collect evidence. In the Soviet Union’s unmanned monthly sampling missions, the spacecraft took off from the moon and returned directly to Earth.
The Chang’e-5 spacecraft, comprising an orbiter, a lander, an ascendant and a returner, was launched on November 24, and its lander-ascending combination reached northern Mons Rumker in the Oceanus Procellarum, also known as the Ocean of Storms, on the near side of the month, on December 1st.
China in recent years has emerged as a major space power with manned space missions and landing a rover in the dark side of the moon. He is currently building his own space station.
Chang’e-5, the third Chinese spacecraft to land on the moon, is the latest in a series of increasingly ambitious missions to the Beijing space program.
The samples were transferred to Chinese research teams on Saturday morning.
The scientists will carry out the storage, analysis and research of the first samples in the country collected from the extraterrestrial object, said the China National Space Administration (CNSA).
The return capsule of the Chang’e-5 spacecraft landed in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in the early hours of Thursday, bringing evidence collected from the moon.
The Chang’e-5 mission marks a successful completion of China’s current three-stage orbital and landing exploration program and the return of tests begun in 2004.
It was the country’s first attempt to bring the moon’s evidence in more than 40 years after the United States sent astronauts to the moon to collect evidence. In the Soviet Union’s unmanned monthly sampling missions, the spacecraft took off from the moon and returned directly to Earth.
The Chang’e-5 spacecraft, comprising an orbiter, a lander, an ascendant and a returner, was launched on November 24, and its lander-ascending combination reached northern Mons Rumker in the Oceanus Procellarum, also known as the Ocean of Storms, on the near side of the month, on December 1st.
China in recent years has emerged as a major space power with manned space missions and landing a rover in the dark side of the moon. He is currently building his own space station.
Chang’e-5, the third Chinese spacecraft to land on the moon, is the latest in a series of increasingly ambitious missions to the Beijing space program.