A Chinese unmanned lunar probe is on its way back to Earth after collecting rock samples from the far side of the moon, the country's national space agency said on Tuesday as China vies to become the first nation to bring back samples from the remote area.
A landing module of the Chang'e 6 spacecraft, named after the Chinese Moon goddess, landed on the moon's far side on Sunday and lifted off again from the lunar surface on Tuesday afternoon, national space agency CNSA said.
The module has reached the planned lunar orbit with the samples onboard, it added.
According to the agency, the probe used a drill to take samples from beneath the surface of Earth's satellite and collected rocks on the floor of the moon.
The onboard equipment, including devices provided by the European Space Agency (ESA) and France, had worked as expected, CNSA said.
The probe withstood the high temperatures on the far side of the celestial body, but lift-off had been particularly delicate, the agency said.
Due to the probe's position on the moon, the control centre on Earth could not maintain direct contact with it and is reliant on the Queqiao-2 relay satellite.
The probe therefore had to align itself independently for the launch.
According to the CNSA, the space capsule will now dock with the Chang'e 6 spacecraft in lunar orbit and begin its journey back to Earth.
The agency expects the spacecraft to touch down in China's northern autonomous region of Inner Mongolia around the end of June.
The mission is considered a milestone for the country's ambitious space programme. If successful, it would mark the first time that soil and rock samples from the far side of the moon are brought back to Earth.
It is the sixth lunar mission launched by China since 2007.
The Chang'e 4 in 2019 became the first spacecraft to land on the far side of the moon, the lunar hemisphere which always faces away from the Earth. The Chang'e 5, meanwhile, collected samples from the near side of the moon in 2020.
The new mission, launched on May 3 and expected to last 53 days, was set to collect samples from the South Pole-Aitken basin, a major crater.
China has said it wants to send a manned lunar mission by 2030. The moon has become the subject of renewed interest to many spacefaring nations in recent years due to the valuable raw materials it is believed to contain.