China launches historic mission to moon.
China has launched a historic mission to moon to collect “first lunar samples".
The spacecraft will “collect and return samples from the moon” and that it will be the country's “first attempt to retrieve samples from an extraterrestrial body.” If successful, China will become the only third nation to have collected the lunar sample.
China’s indigenous Long March-5 rocket carried the “Chang’e-5” spacecraft which blasted off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on the coast of southern island province of Hainan province.
Its aim includes “investigation of the landing area to obtain the on-site analysis data related to the lunar samples, as well as systematic and long-term laboratory analysis of the lunar samples.”
The spacecraft is “world's first moon-sample mission for more than 40 years” and one of the most complicated and challenging missions in China's aerospace history.
Only two nations, the US and the Soviet Union have been able to collect the lunar sample. The last mission was undertaken by Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission in 1976.
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