As the third space travel nation after the USA and the Soviet Union, China brought moon rocks to earth for the first time. After the unmanned lunar mission, the capsule of the spaceship “Chang’e 5” landed in the early hours of the night on Thursday, local time, with around 2 kg of lunar samples in the north Chinese steppe, as reported by state television. It is the first time in 44 years that moon rocks have been brought back to earth.

Rescue teams with helicopters and vehicles equipped with powerful searchlights found the parachute-landed capsule in the Siziwang Banner in Inner Mongolia. It is now to be opened in the capital Beijing. Afterwards, the moon samples would be examined by researchers, reported the state news agency Xinhua. China will also make some of the samples available to scientists in other countries.

Researchers are eagerly awaiting the moon rocks, which are much younger than any of the USA and the USA Soviet Union collected soil samples from the satellite. The investigation could provide new insights into the volcanic activity and history of the moon. The US Apollo missions had brought around 380 kg of lunar rock with them. The Soviet Union collected about 300 g with unmanned missions.

1.2 billion years The lander of “Chang’e 5” had in one after the German astronomer Karl Rümker (1788 – 1862) named volcanic area in the “ocean of storms”. This region in the upper, left-hand part of the Earth-facing side of the moon is 1.2 billion years old. In contrast, the age of the moon rocks that the USA and the Soviet Union in the 60 er and 70 years, estimated at 3.1 billion and 4.4 billion years ago.

China is pursuing an ambitious space program with further missions to the moon and Mars as well the construction of its own space station in the coming years.

In January 2019 China landed as the first space nation with “Chang’e 4” on the relatively unexplored far side of the moon. A rover was launched and continues to explore the surface today. The unmanned Mars probe “Tianwen-1” (Questions to Heaven) is also on its way to the “Red Planet”. As of this week, the spaceship is more than 100 millions of kilometers from Earth. It is scheduled to arrive on Mars in February in order to attempt the landing in the following weeks, which is, however, much more risky than a moon landing. Of 18 landing attempts on Mars have so far only been 10 successful – nine through the USA alone.

(anw)