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China’s Chang’e 5 spacecraft left the moon’s surface this Thursday and is returning to Earth, according to images broadcast by state television CCTV.
The spatial module, which arrived on the moon on Tuesday, left the lunar soil at 11:10 pm in Beijing (3:10 pm in Lisbon), this being the first attempt at sampling the lunar surface in over 40 years, the channel reported.
If the return to Earth is fine, China will be the third country to collect lunar samples, after the United States and the former Soviet Union.
The samples were collected on the surface of the Moon, using a robotic arm, and underground, with a drill that pierced two meters, to obtain various samples that can date back to very different periods.
The probe is expected to land in the Inner Mongolia region of northern China later this month.
This Tuesday the probe landed successfully in the area north of Mons Rümker, No Oceanus Procellarum, an area not yet visited by astronauts or unmanned space missions.
This is the newest venture in Chinese space program, what sent its first astronaut to space in 2003 and this there is a ship on its way to Mars. The program ultimately aims to place a human on the moon.
If successful, it will be the first time scientists have obtained new moon rock samples since a Soviet probe landed on the moon in the 1970s.
Chang’e 5 was launched on November 24 by the Long March-5 missile, already launched on July 23, China’s first Mars mission, Tianwen-1, is expected to arrive on the red planet in May.
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