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Most of the lunar dust and rock samples scientists can study on Earth date back to the Apollo era, with the last samples being returned from the moon in the 1970s. China wants to change that and this week it will launch the Chang’e-5 probe which will collect material from the lunar surface and return it to Earth for study. The mission will test China’s ability to collect samples from a distance in preparation for more complicated missions in the future.
If China manages to recover material from the moon, it will only become the third nation to complete the feat. The United States and the Soviet Union are the only countries to have returned samples from the Moon. While only two countries have recovered samples from the moon, both Japan and India have launched moon missions.
The first man-made object to land on the moon was a spacecraft called Luna 2 sent by the Soviet Union that crashed on the moon in 1959. It was the first man-made object to reach another celestial body. Apollo-era missions sent six flights between 1969 and 1972 to the moon and returned 842 pounds of rock and soil from the moon.
In the 1970s, the Soviet Union sent three successful robotic sample return missions to the moon, with the latest being named Luna 24 reporting only six ounces of sample. China wants to collect about 4.5 pounds of lunar samples from a previously unvisited area of the moon. China wants to collect samples from a lava plain known as Oceanus Procellarum, which means Ocean of Storms.
The Apollo-era specimens all came from less than half the lunar surface. Scientists have called for new sample return missions to examine several critical areas where questions remain from previous exploration.
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