China launches Chang’e 5 Spacecraft To Collect Moon Rocks

China has planned to launch its Chang’e 5 spacecraft on Monday, this first mission is designed to bring moon rocks back to Earth in more than four decades.

This is the latest step in an ambitious space program that China hopes will culminate in an international lunar research station and ultimately a human colony on the moon by the 2030s.

AllNews gathered that Chang'e 5 is a robotic Chinese lunar exploration mission consisting of a lander and a sample-return vehicle. It is scheduled for launch on 24 November 2020, to land on the moon by November 27, and return to earth around December 16–17.

 Chang'e 5 will be China's first sample return mission, aiming to return at least 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of lunar soil and rock samples back to the Earth. Like its predecessors, the spacecraft is named after the Chinese Moon goddess, Chang'e.

READ ALSO: China Launches 6G Satellite Into Orbit

This will be the first lunar sample-return mission since Luna 24 in 1976 and – if successful – would make China the third country to return samples from the moon after the USA and the USSR. It will launch from the Wenchang Satellite launch centre in Hainan

The entire Chang’e 5 mission, from lift-off to the recovery of the rock samples, will be over in less than a month.

After the spacecraft enters orbit around the moon, Chang’e 5 will split into two: A lander will head to the surface while the other piece, an orbiter, waits for its return.

Once it gets to the surface, the lander needs to accomplish all of its drilling and scooping tasks within a single lunar day, which lasts 14 Earth days. The lander is not designed to survive the frigid dark lunar night.

The Chang’e-5 lander includes a small rocket and before the sun sets it will blast off with the rock and soil samples. This rocket will rendezvous and dock with the piece of the spacecraft that remained in orbit. The samples will be transferred to the orbiter for the journey back to Earth.

The sample is scheduled to land in the Inner Mongolia region of China in the middle of December.