The weight of the samples, eagerly anticipated by the scientific community, was disclosed during a handover ceremony at the CNSA headquarters in Beijing. The lunar dust, placed in a special container, was officially handed over by Zhang Kejian, head of the CNSA, to Ding Chibiao, vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The samples have been transported to a lunar sample lab in Beijing for storage and initial processing, the CNSA reported. These materials, the first from the moon's far side, hold unique scientific value, promising to enhance our understanding of the moon's history and aiding future lunar exploration and resource utilization. The CNSA described them as a "shared treasure" of humanity.
Ge Ping, a senior official overseeing China's lunar programs, remarked after the ceremony that the samples appear to be "thicker and stickier" than those collected from the moon's near side - which always faces Earth - and there are some "lumps" contained within. "Next, researchers at the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences will unseal the container and then divide them. After preparatory work, scientists can access the samples in accordance with our lunar sample management regulation," Ge told reporters. "We expect systematic scientific analyses and studies will lead to new findings."
According to Ge, domestic researchers will have access to the first group of lunar samples by the end of 2024, with international scientists to follow.
The Chang'e 6 mission, which marks the first time samples have been brought back from the far side of the moon, was launched on May 3 by a Long March 5 heavy-lift carrier rocket from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province. The 8.35-ton spacecraft included an orbiter, a lander, an ascender, and a reentry capsule.
After a series of complex maneuvers, the lander touched down in the South Pole-Aitken Basin, one of the largest known impact craters in the solar system, on June 2. This mission marks only the second time a spacecraft has visited the lunar far side. The first was in January 2019, when the Chang'e 4 probe landed in the same basin but did not return with samples.
The Chang'e 6 lander operated for 49 hours on the moon's far side, using a mechanical arm and a drill to collect surface and subsurface materials. Several scientific instruments were also activated to conduct surveys and analyses. Once the collection tasks were completed, the ascender lifted off from the lunar surface, docking with the reentry capsule in lunar orbit to transfer the samples.
The orbiter and reentry capsule then returned to Earth's orbit, where the capsule successfully landed in Inner Mongolia on Tuesday.
Prior to this mission, all lunar samples on Earth had been collected from the near side of the moon by the United States' Apollo missions, the Soviet Union's Luna missions, and China's Chang'e 5 mission.
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