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Photos released by the Chinese National Space Administration show the red flag with five golden stars attached to the lunar surface.
The images were recorded by a camera from the Chang’e-5 space probe, before leaving the moon with samples of lunar rocks on Thursday (3).
Two previous Chinese lunar missions had already carried flags during their voyages, but only on the linings of the ships, none of which could therefore be affixed to the Moon.
The first flag placed on the lunar surface refers to the historic American manned mission Apollo 11, in 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took this “small step for man, but a giant leap for mankind”, becoming the first humans to set foot on the moon.
Hence, the American mission flew stars and stripes (as the flag of the United States is known) to the lunar surface, in an image that has become iconic in space exploration.
“Pioneer” flag sewn by Portuguese Maria Isilda Ribeiro, who lived in New Jersey and helped sew the American flag believed to have been left on the moon nearly 50 years ago. “My boss told me to finish the flag, they wanted to take it to the moon,” he told DN in July of last year.
Since then, five more US flags have been planted on the lunar surface in subsequent missions until 1972.
In 2012, NASA cited satellite imagery to ensure that five of the flags were still standing, although several experts believe they have already lost their colors due to the brightness of the sun.
The original flag (the one that the Portuguese Maria Isilda helped sew) was, according to astronaut Buzz Aldrin, positioned very close to the Apollo spacecraft and, according to Aldrin, probably burned when the spacecraft took off.
The probe went to collect samples of the lunar soil
The state newspaper Global Times described that this act of raising the Chinese flag on the lunar surface allowed to relive the “thrill and inspiration” experienced during the US Apollo missions.
The fabric flag was deployed by the Chang’e-5 spacecraft, which took soil and rock samples to bring to Earth for the first time from a Soviet probe mission to the moon in the 1970s.
The Chinese probe is expected to return to the Inner Mongolia region of northern China later this month.
On Tuesday, the spacecraft successfully landed in the area north of Mons Rümker, at Oceanus Procellarum, an area not yet visited by astronauts or unmanned space missions.
As for the Chinese flag left on the moon today, it is 2 meters wide and 90 centimeters high and weighs about one kilogram. All parts of the flag were designed to withstand very low temperatures, project leader Li Yunfeng told the Global Times.
“A common national flag on Earth would not survive the harsh lunar environment,” said another Chinese official of the project, Cheng Chang.
The Chang’e-5 mission is China’s third successful landing in seven years.
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