For the first time in more than 40 years, a capsule has returned to Earth containing samples of rocks from the moon – thanks to one Chinese spacecraft that landed on Wednesday afternoon.
According to state media, a capsule of the unsecured Chang’e 5 probe landed with its parachutes in the Siziwang district of the Inner Mongolia region just after 1:00 p.m. ET Wednesday, early Thursday morning in the region.
Shortly after the spacecraft landed, state media tweeted photos of a ground search and recovery team hunting for the capsule at the landing site. It also reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping has congratulated the mission’s success.
Earlier this month, two of the spacecraft’s four modules landed on the moon. They collected about 4.4 pounds of rock and soil samples from the surface after drilling about six feet into the lunar crust in a previously unexplored lava plain.
A vehicle taking off then transported the samples, kept in a sealed container, back to the return module to apparently complete it successful mission – yet another in a series of increasingly ambitious missions for the Chinese space program.
On Wednesday Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA Scientific Director, tweeted a message of congratulation to China after the return of the capsule. “These monsters will help reveal secrets of our Earth-Moon system and gain new insights into the history of our solar system,” he said.
While on the moon, the spacecraft – named after a mythical Chinese moon goddess – raised the Chinese flag for the first time, according to images from the China National Space Administration. It was the third Chinese spacecraft to land on the moon and the first to lift off.
Scientists plan to study the samples to find clues to the moon’s origin and its formation. The rocks came from a region called the Mons Rümker, which is believed to contain rocks billions of years younger than those previously retrieved.
China has now become the third country in the world to collect samples from the moon, behind the US and the former Soviet Union.
The last samples returned to Earth in 1976 with the Russian Luna-24 mission. Before that, American Apollo astronauts brought back hundreds of kilograms of moon rocks.