Beijing, Dec 17: China’s Chang’e-5 probe successfully touched down on Earth in the early hours of Thursday, bringing home the first samples of the moon in over 40 years.
The spacecraft landed in Siziwang Banner in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region at 1:59 AM (local time), according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA). Zhang Kejian, head of the CNSA, declared the Chang’e-5 mission a success.
It marks a successful conclusion of China’s current three-step lunar exploration programme of orbiting and landing, and bringing back samples which began in 2004, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
President Xi Jinping congratulated scientists on the complete success of the Chang’e-5 mission. As China’s most complicated space project, Xi in his message to the CNSA said, the Chang’e-5 mission “is another major achievement in overcoming difficulties by giving full play to the advantages of the new system of pooling national resources and strength, marking a great step forward in China’s space industry”.
“This will contribute to deepening the understanding of the origin of the moon and the evolution history of the solar system,” he said, adding that “your remarkable feats will always be remembered by our country and people.”
The Chang’e-5 space mission is China’s maiden attempt to retrieve materials from an extra-terrestrial body. It was launched on November 24. It was the first attempt to bring the moon samples in over 40 years after the US sent astronauts to the moon to collect samples.
In the Soviet Union’s unmanned lunar sampling missions, the spacecraft took off from the moon and returned to Earth directly. Commenting on Chang’e-5 mission, Dr. Jonathan McDowell, Astronomer, Centre for Astrophysics, Harvard and Smithsonian, said it is the most ambitious space programme China has accomplished so far. (PTI)
