China has taken a whole new step in its moon exploration. President Xi Jinping on Dec. 17, 2020 congratulated the complete success of the Chang'e-5 mission(任务) that brings back the country's first samples collected from the moon. Following America and Russia, China has become me the third country in the world to collect rocks from the moon.
Change-5 first took off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in Hainan on November 24, 2020. It landed on a massive lava plain (熔岩平原) of the moon on December1,2020. Then it started to collect the samples. The samples may help scientists understand more about the moons origins. It may help work out how the moon comes into being and how it develops. Hopefully, the success of the collection will set an example for other more difficult missions in the future which will be carried out on other planets.
After the returning capsule (太空舱)landed back on Earth, it will be taken to Beijing by plane, where the capsule will beopened and the samples will be ready for study. "China will also provide some of the samples to scientists in other countries", said Pei Zhaoyu, a director at the CNSA.
As the Chang'e-5 mission has been completed successfully, Chinese scientists are already making plans for future moon exploration, including project to build a scientific research station on the moon "We hope to work together with other countries to build the international lunar scientific research station, which could provide a shared platform for lunar scientific exploration and technological experiments," Pei said.
