Liftoff: China Chang'e-6 Moon Mission to Retrieve Samples from Far Side South Pole

Liftoff: China Chang'e-6 Moon Mission to Retrieve Samples from Far Side South Pole

A Long March-5 rocket, carrying China's Chang'e-6 spacecraft, blasted off from its launchpad at the Wenchang Space Launch Site on the coast of the southern island province of Hainan on Friday afternoon, May 3, 2024. The probe will take samples on the far side of the Moon and bring them back to Earth in a world-first. 

This mission features scientific payloads from countries that include France, Italy, Sweden, and Pakistan. The international scientific payloads carried by the Chang'e-6 mission include the French radon gas detector (CNES), the European Space Agency/Swedish ion analyzer, and the Italian laser corner reflector (Agenzia Spaziale Italiana), as well as the Pakistani ICUBE-Q cube satellite. The mission will last about 53 days. 

Chang'e-6's pre-selected landing area is located in the southern part of the Apollo basin in the SPA basin (43°±2° south latitude, 154°±4° west longitude).

In 2020, Chang'e 5 was the first lunar sample-return mission since the Soviet Union's Luna 24 in 1976. The mission made China the third country to return samples from the Moon after the United States and the Soviet Union.

Image Credit: China National Space Administration (CNSA)

Release Date: May 3, 2024

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