China set to blast off to the far side of the Moon – here’s what it could discover

By Ben Rider-Stokes, The Open University

China is attempting to recover the first ever soil and rock samples from the lunar far side. The surface mission, Chang’e 6, named after the Chinese Moon goddess Chang’e, is a predecessor to the successful sample return mission, Chang’e 5, and a part of the Chinese lunar exploration programme.

The mission is set for launch using a long March 5 rocket at the Wenchang satellite launch centre in Hainan province on May 3. The spacecraft due to land on the Moon is projected to weigh 3,200kg carrying scientific equipment from France, Italy and the European Space Agency.

Chang’e 5 was the first lunar sample-return mission since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 in 1976. Chang’e 5 was hugely successful, returning 2kg of material from the near side. This material led to important scientific discoveries, such as the youngest lunar material ever discovered. Previously we only had much older samples returned from the Apollo missions and sampled meteorites. The younger material retrieved by Chang’e 5 helped scientists confirm the predicted ages of impact craters on the Moon.

The spacecraft will reach the Moon in approximately 53 days and aims to collect around 2kg of material from 2m below the surface. Chang’e 6 will attempt to land in the southern hemisphere, specifically, the southern portion of the Apollo crater, which resides within the South Pole-Aikin impact basin.

This impact basin, created by a large meteorite crashing into the Moon, is thought to be the largest (2,400km), deepest (6.2-8.2km) and oldest (4.3 billion years old) on the Moon.

Large meteorite collisions with the surface of the Moon can potentially strip away the crust – outermost layer of the surface – and eject fragments of deeper-forming materials. This means that studying the basin could help us learn more about what resides in the depths of the Moon.

These deeper-forming materials, known as mantle-like material or dunite, are dominated by a mineral called olivine.

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