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According to the Beijing space agency, a Chinese probe sent to the moon to bring back the first lunar samples in four decades has successfully landed.
China has invested billions in its military-run space program, with hopes of having a manned space station by 2022 and eventually sending humans to the moon.
The goal of the last mission is to collect moon rocks and soil to help scientists learn about the moon’s origins, formation and volcanic activity on its surface.
The Chang’e-5 spacecraft, named after the Chinese moon goddess, landed on the near side of the moon late Tuesday evening, the state agency Xinhua reported, citing the China National Space Administration.
If the return trip is successful, China will only be the third country to have recovered samples from the moon, after the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s.
The probe entered the moon’s orbit on Saturday after a 112-hour journey from Earth, Xinhua said, after a rocket carried it into space from Hainan province last week.
It involves collecting 2 kg (4.5 lb) of surface material in a previously unexplored area known as Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms), which consists of a vast lava plain, according to the scientific journal Nature.
The harvest will take place over the course of a lunar day, equivalent to approximately 14 Earth days.
Its lunar samples will then be returned to Earth in a capsule scheduled to land in the Inner Mongolia region of northern China this month, according to NASA, the US space agency.
The mission is technically demanding and involves several innovations not seen during previous attempts to collect moon rocks, Jonathan McDowell, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said last month.
Under President Xi Jinping, plans for China’s “space dream”, as he calls it, have gone into overdrive.
The new superpower is trying to catch up with the US and Russia after years of belated correspondence with their space milestones.
A Chinese lunar rover landed on the opposite side of the moon in January 2019 in a world first that bolstered Beijing’s aspirations to become a space superpower.
The latest spacecraft is part of a series of ambitious goals set by Beijing, which include creating a powerful rocket capable of carrying heavier loads than NASA and the private space company SpaceX can handle, a moon base and a permanently manned space station.
Chinese astronauts and scientists have also discussed manned missions to Mars.
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