A Chinese space probe sent to gather material from a previously unexplored part of the moon has completed its mission and is preparing to send back the world's first lunar samples in four decades, Beijing said Thursday.
China has poured billions into its military-run space programme, with hopes of having a crewed space station by 2022 and eventually sending humans to the Moon.
The Chang'e-5 spacecraft, named after the mythical Chinese moon goddess, landed on the moon Tuesday and has now completed its gathering of lunar rocks and soil, the China National Space Administration said.
The spacecraft had been due to collect two kilograms (4.5 pounds) of material from an area known as Oceanus Procellarum — or "Ocean of Storms" — a vast lava plain, according to the science journal Nature.
Scientists hope the samples will help them learn about the Moon's origins, formation and volcanic activity on its surface.
State media said this week that the craft was preparing for "around 48 hours" of tasks on the lunar surface.
If successful, China will be only the third country to have retrieved samples from the Moon, following the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s.
This is the first such attempt since the Soviet Union's Luna 24 mission in 1976.
The CNSA on Thursday said the Chang'e-5 had completed the sampling and successfully packed the collected materials in a special container by Wednesday night.
"Scientific detection was carried out as planned," the space agency said, without providing details.
The samples will be returned to Earth in a capsule programmed to land in northern China's Inner Mongolia region in early December, according to US space agency NASA.
The Chang'e-5 probe completes automatic lunar surface sampling and encapsulates the payload and works normally
At 22:00 on December 2, after about 19 hours of lunar surface work, the lunar exploration project Chang'e-5 probe successfully completed the automatic sampling of the lunar surface, and the samples were packaged and stored in the storage device carried by the ascender in a predetermined form.
During the sampling and packaging process, the scientific and technical personnel simulated the geographic model of the sampling area according to the data returned by the detector in the ground laboratory and simulated sampling throughout the entire process, providing an important basis for sampling decision-making and operations in each link.
The lunar soil structure detector and other payloads configured by the lander are working normally, and scientific detection is carried out as planned, and sampling information support is provided.
Automatic sampling is one of the core key links of the Chang'e-5 mission. The detector withstands the test of lunar surface temperature exceeding 100 degrees Celsius, overcomes the constraints of measurement and control, illumination, and power supply, and relies on a newly developed extraterrestrial celestial body sample collection mechanism , Separately collect lunar samples by mechanical arm surface extraction and drilling tool drilling, realizing multi-point and diversified automatic sampling.
Among them, the drilling tool drilled samples of lunar soil under the lunar surface, and the robotic arm carried out various sampling on the lunar surface with the support of the end sampler.
In order to ensure that the lunar sample is kept vacuum tight and not affected by the external environment during the return to the earth, the probe is sealed and encapsulated on the lunar surface.
The Chang'e-5 probe is equipped with a variety of payloads such as landing cameras, panoramic cameras, lunar soil structure detectors, lunar mineral spectrum analyzers, etc., which can detect and study the lunar surface morphology and mineral composition, and detect the shallow structure of the moon. Play an important role in scientific exploration missions. Before the probe drilled and sampled, the lunar soil structure detector analyzed and judged the underground lunar soil structure in the sampling area, and provided a data reference for sampling.
