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4 December (UPI) – China’s Chang’e-5 lander left the moon after spending two days on the surface, leaving its first official flag.
China has carried two flags on previous missions, but the one that remained on Thursday was the first made from fabric, China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp. said. extreme temperatures on lunar surfaces.
“A normal national flag on Earth would not survive the harsh lunar environment,” CASIC team member Chang Cheng told the Global Times.
China’s National Space Administration has released an image of the five-star red flag on the lunar surface.
The Chang’e-5 lander landed on the moon Tuesday on a mission to collect rock samples and test the depths below the surface for minerals and water.
The 1.2 billion-year-old volcanic plain where the Chang’e-5 lander searched for rock samples is considerably younger than the region of the moon visited by American and Soviet spacecraft.
Mons Rumker’s rocks could help scientists gain new insights into the timing of the moon’s formation, as well as the development of its geological features.
Both NASA and the Soviet Union space agency collected and returned the last of the moon rocks in the 1970s.
Last year, China became the first nation to land a spacecraft on the far side of the moon when Chang’e-4 landed near the moon’s south pole.
Brooks Hays contributed to this report.
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