Moon rock brought to Earth for first time in four decades

By Trevor Mogg Published April 25, 2023

China’s Chang’e 5 spacecraft has successfully returned to Earth, bringing with it a sample of rock from the moon.

Recommended Videos

It’s the first moon rock to be brought to Earth in 44 years.

Chinese state media said the uncrewed spacecraft landed in the Inner Mongolia region on Wednesday, December 16, at the end of a complex 23-day mission.

During its voyage, the probe made a successful landing on the moon before drilling about two meters beneath the lunar surface to gather the sample. It also took material from the surface. It then placed the collected rocks inside a container before loading it onto an ascent vehicle. The ascent vehicle then departed the moon and transferred the sample to the main spacecraft for the trip home.

Before now, only two other countries have successfully brought home pieces of moon rock: The U.S. during its Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the Soviets in 1976.

What makes this latest effort so exciting is the age of the collected rock, which is said to be billions of years younger than the previously collected samples. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) said the geological sample will give scientists the chance to learn more about the formation, structure, and history of the moon. The mission also allowed the space agency to test new technology in advance of more challenging space trips in the future

With this latest mission, China has now made a total of three landings on the moon. Its Chang’e 3 mission touched down in 2013, while Chang’e 4 visited in 2019.

In other missions demonstrating China’s growing interest in space exploration, the Asian nation earlier this year sent a spacecraft to Mars, marking the first time for a mission to send an orbiter, a lander, and a rover to the red planet at the same time. The spacecraft is set to reach the Martian surface in February 2021 — around the same time as NASA’s Perseverance rover and another mission launched by the United Arab Emirates.

Contributing Editor

Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

Topics

Space

Want a city on the Moon? Scientists say there’s not enough water

A billion tons still comes up short

Artist impression of activities in a Moon Base.

For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.

A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.

Space

NASA’s new telescope can see 100 times more sky than Hubble in a single shot

NASA just launched a $4 billion telescope to map billions of galaxies

NASA Roman Telescope Launch Featured

The Hubble telescope has an almost legendary status. Over the last three decades, Hubble gave us some of the most spectacular close-ups of the universe ever captured, and now, NASA’s newest space telescope wants to see the bigger picture. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope successfully launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:26 a.m. EDT on August 30. Roman is now beginning a roughly three-month journey toward the Sun-Earth L2 point, nearly a million miles away, where it will spend its primary five-year mission surveying huge portions of the cosmos.

Roman carries a 2.4-meter primary mirror, the same diameter as Hubble’s, but its Wide Field Instrument can capture a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble’s. NASA expects it to use that combination of sharpness and scale to map billions of galaxies, study dark matter and dark energy, and discover enormous numbers of previously unknown worlds.

Space

NASA built the Roman Space Telescope to study dark matter, but it can also help protect Earth from killer asteroids

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope wasn't built to hunt asteroids, but it turns out to be great at it.

Nancy Grace Roman space telescope.

NASA is about to launch a telescope built to unlock some of the universe's biggest mysteries, and it turns out that same design could help protect Earth along the way.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to launch from Kennedy Space Center on August 30, 2026, with a primary mission focused on studying dark matter and dark energy - the invisible forces shaping galaxies and cosmic expansion. Researchers now say its unique design also makes it unexpectedly effective at spotting dangerous asteroids headed our way (via MIT Technology Review).