China’s new Moon mission is about to launch, and it’s a rare example of countries working together

By Richard de Grijs, Macquarie University

All systems are “go” for tonight’s launch of China’s next step in a carefully planned lunar exploration program. Placed on top of a powerful Long March 5 rocket, the Chang'e 6 mission is due to lift off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on southern Hainan Island at 7:30pm AEST.

It aims to deliver several “firsts” in the increasingly crowded and competitive arena of Moon exploration.

Chang'e 6 will be only the second mission to land on the lunar far side, after Chang'e 4 successfully touched down first in 2019.

It’s the latest mission in China’s successful and long-running lunar exploration program, aimed at proving new technological advances with each mission. And this time, it’s also an inspiring feat of international collaboration.

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What’s on the far side of the Moon?

The spacecraft was originally built as a backup for the previous mission – Chang'e 5 – which successfully brought back 1.73 kilograms of lunar regolith (soil) from the Moon’s near side in 2020.

However, the Chang'e 6 mission parameters are more ambitious and scientifically more highly anticipated. It is also a complicated mission. Its four separate spacecraft must work in close coordination to successfully return up to 2kg of regolith from the Moon’s far side.

From our vantage point on Earth, the Moon’s far side is never visible. The Earth-Moon system is tidally locked: even though both rotate, we always face the same half of the Moon.

When the Soviet Union’s Luna 3 probe returned the first images of the Moon’s far side in 1959, they showed a heavily cratered surface. It’s quite different from that of the familiar near side.

This pockmarked appearance, combined with samples returned by NASA’s Apollo missions, offered some support for the popular “Late Heavy Bombardment” theory. Although this theory is not universally accepted, its proponents suggest that large numbers of meteorites and asteroids may have impacted the Solar System’s rocky planets (and their moons) at an early stage of their formation.

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