China has achieved historic success in lunar exploration. The probe Chang’e-6 has returned to Earth bringing with him The first rock samples collected on the far side of the MoonThe Chang’e-6 mission was launched last May and has lasted 53 days until it ended on Tuesday at 08:07, Spanish peninsular time, with the landing of the probe in the northern Chinese region of Inner Mongolia.
During this time, the probe traveled to the former South Pole-Aitken basin on the Moon. There he collected 2 kilograms of rocks from the lunar surface, using spoon and drill tools, which are the first to reach Earth from the far side of the Moon.
According to the South China Morning Post, the re-entry process began at 07:41, after the orbiter had separated from the Chang’e-6 reentry capsulewith the samples collected, at a distance of approximately 5,000 kilometers from Earth.
“At 07:41, the Chang’e-6 return module entered the atmosphere at a speed of around 100 km/h. 11.2 kilometers per second at an altitude of 120 kilometers above the surface,” the China National Space Administration, CNSA, said. About 10 kilometers from the surface, Chang’e-6 opened the parachute to control the descent and subsequently landed in the grasslands of Siziwang Banner of the Mongolian Autonomous Region.
CNSA Director Zhang Kejian announced that the Chang’e-6 mission “has achieved complete success“and has made China the first country to successfully land on the far side of the Moon and return with samples collected there.