BEIJING, 4 Jun (AP) \u2014 China said its lunar spacecraft unfurled the country\u2019s red and gold flag for the first time on the far side of the moon before part of the vehicle blasted off early Tuesday with rock and soil samples to bring back to Earth.<\/p>\n
The mission was hailed as a success in China, which has made significant advances in a space program that aims to put a person on the moon before the end of this decade.<\/p>\n
The Chang\u2019e-6 probe was launched last month and its lander touched down on the far side of the moon Sunday. Its ascender lifted off Tuesday morning at 7:38 a.m. Beijing time, with its engine burning for about six minutes as it entered a preset orbit around the moon, the China National Space Administration said.<\/p>\n
The agency said the spacecraft withstood a high temperature test on the lunar surface, and acquired the samples using both drilling and surface collection before stowing them in a container inside the ascender of the probe as planned.<\/p>\n
The container will be transferred to a reentry capsule that is due to return to Earth in the deserts of China\u2019s Inner Mongolia region about June 25.<\/p>\n
The small flag, which the agency said was made of special composite materials, emerged on a retractable arm deployed from the side of the lunar lander and was not placed onto the lunar soil, according to an animation of the mission released by the agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cMission accomplished!\u201d Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying wrote on X. \u201cAn unprecedented feat in human lunar exploration history!\u201d<\/p>\n
Missions to the moon\u2019s far side are more difficult because it doesn\u2019t face the Earth, requiring a relay satellite to maintain communications. The terrain is also more rugged, with fewer flat areas to land.<\/p>\n
Xinhua said the probe\u2019s landing site was the South Pole-Aitken Basin, an impact crater created more than 4 billion years ago that is 13 kilometers (8 miles) deep and has a diameter of 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles).<\/p>\n
It is the oldest and largest of such craters on the moon, so may provide the earliest information about it, Xinhua said, adding that the huge impact may have ejected materials from deep below the surface.<\/p>\n
The mission is the sixth in the Chang\u2019e moon exploration program, which is named after a Chinese moon goddess. It is the second designed to bring back samples, following the Chang\u2019e 5, which did so from the near side in 2020.<\/p>\n
The moon program is part of a growing rivalry with the U.S. \u2014 still the leader in space exploration \u2014 and others, including Japan and India. China has put its own space station in orbit and regularly sends crews there.<\/p>\n
China aims to put a person on the moon before 2030, which would make it the second nation after the United States to do so. America is planning to land astronauts on the moon again \u2014 for the first time in more than 50 years \u2014 though NASA pushed the target date back to 2026 earlier this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIJING, 4 Jun (AP) \u2014 China said its lunar spacecraft unfurled the country\u2019s red and gold flag for the first time on the far side of the moon before part of the vehicle blasted off early Tuesday with rock and soil samples to bring back to Earth. The mission was hailed as a success in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-241637","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}