China is about to land on the far side of the moon with Chang'e 6

The Chang’e 6 spacecraft will attempt to land on the far side of the moon on 1 June. If successful, it will extract the first samples of lunar rock from this largely unexplored region of the moon and attempt to bring them back to Earth.

What is the Chang’e 6 spacecraft?

China’s Chang’e series of lunar spacecraft have taken on steadily more ambitious missions, with the eventual goal of establishing a crewed base on the moon in the 2030s. Chang’e 6, which launched aboard a Long March 5 rocket on 3 May, is China’s second sample return mission, after Chang’e 5 successfully delivered a kilogram of material from the moon’s near side to Earth in 2020.

Chang’e 6, however, will attempt to collect around 2 kilograms of material from the far side of the moon, which faces permanently away from Earth. It is harder to land on compared with the near side because of the lack of a direct communications link with Earth, so it is little explored and we have no samples from the region.

Where is Chang’e 6 landing on the moon?

The spacecraft is targeting the Apollo crater in the far side’s southern hemisphere. Scientists hope that these samples might indicate how much water ice is trapped in the region, for future crewed missions, as well as help explain the origin of the larger South Pole-Aitken impact basin the Apollo crater sits in and how the moon was formed. As well as equipment for gathering samples, the lander also has four scientific instruments, from French, Italian, Pakistani and Swedish teams, to analyse and study the landing area.

How will Chang’e 6 land?

The lander, ascender and orbiter modules have been orbiting the moon for around three weeks, since 8 May, and China’s space agency has been waiting for the right orbital conditions to attempt a landing.

On 1 June, the lander and ascender module will detach from the orbiter and begin a roughly 15-minute descent toward the lunar surface. Due to the delay in communications between Earth and the moon’s far side, much of the landing process will be automated, but Chinese engineers can still communicate with the spacecraft using instructions sent using the Queqiao-2 relay satellite, which launched in March this year and is currently in lunar orbit.

Once on the moon, the lander module will use a robotic scoop and drill to take surface samples of rocks and dust, as well as dig down around 2 metres into the lunar surface to extract deeper deposits. Gathering these samples will take around two days.

When will Chang’e 6 return to Earth?

Once the lander has successfully taken its lunar samples, it will transfer them to the ascender module, which will autonomously blast off from the moon and meet with the orbiting module, after a 6-minute flight. The samples will then transfer to a return capsule that can survive the descent through Earth’s atmosphere.

If all goes according to plan, the return sample capsule will arrive at Earth on 25 June, landing at the Siziwang Banner site in Inner Mongolia.