China's Chang'e 6 mission travels back to earth from the dark side of the moon | DW News

China's Chang E6 lunar probes on its way back to Earth after collecting Rock and soil samples from The Far Side of the Moon China's national space agency confirmed the uncrewed spacecraft lifted off from the moon's surface early on Tuesday and entered Luna orbit if it returns safely to Earth China would become the first country to retrieve samples from the moon's Far Side Keith cowing is editor of NASA watch.com he explained how big a deal this is well it's a big deal in that this is the first time we will get samples back from The Far Side of the Moon prior to this if I can use my little moon this is the side we see most all of the samples have come from this side this Mission landed on the backside down here very difficult place to get to so it's the first samples from The Far Side of the Moon but this is the second time China has landed in The Far Side of the Moon and they're the only country that have done this so it's a big deal so and and is the big deal is it the fact that this has been done successfully so far or are we expecting some sort of Treasure Trove from these these bucket fulls of rocks oh well a anytime your space fishion goes and does what it's supposed to do and comes home that that's celebration but the Rocks again that the rocks that they're looking to get are from the South Pole aen Basin down here back billions of years ago something very big smashed the moon and there's a big dent you can't really see it unless you're looking at Maps but it exposed rocks that were very deep inside the moon so what this mission may be bring back is the oldest moon rocks we've ever seen from a very early time in the solar system perhaps a very short time after the moon itself formed so this is a big deal you know with a big D yeah uh the European space agency reckons that more than a hundred uh Lon emissions by private companies and by governments are expected to take place by 2030 why are all these countries suddenly so eager to go back up there well you know it's interesting I I'm 68 and I grew up back when we had the space race and it was America and Russia and then everybody or Soviets and everybody in between and it was difficult nobody had ever done it before and it was a race for a variety of geopolitical reasons and so forth well we did that and it sort of fell out of fashion for 10 or 20 years and then suddenly the ability to go back to the moon was something that prior to that had been like the ultimate technological badge of honor for a nation and then other countries started developing their own abilities to do this Japan and China and India and Israel and I the list gets longer every year so now the bar for going down is lower and here's a chance for the other billions of people in the world to you know have a chance to do something amazing but here's here's the thing you didn't ask this but the most important thing is I I remember seeing somebody walked in the surface of the you might have remembered I don't know but for two-thirds of the people alive today have never seen a person walk on the surface of another world so when we eventually do that all these missions build up to it when we do that it's going to be like doing the same thing again for the first time this will be the first lunar Landing for billions of people so it's all part of one big okay so just just China when when China when these rocks get back to Earth and China goes through them um does it keep them and the data to itself or does the world get to to see what rocks from the other side of the world look like now the nice thing about lunar uh research is that you may have politics back on Earth but usually the science is something that's done uh and the re results come up rather quickly as a matter of fact although the US and China can't really do much in space American researchers were allowed to submit proposals to study the lunar material that's being brought back by Chen 6 so you know um I China's been very very open about this and they're justifiably proud that they're doing this so they I think want everybody to know what they found and so is China now the big space Power uh it depends where you stand depends on where you sit they they've had a a excellent track record thus far other countries have landed or crashed or done stuff and we haven't gotten our missions really back into the swing of things so right now they seem to be the one to uh pay attention to but as you mentioned before within a very few years this is going to become a commonplace thing to do and the more you do it the better you get at it the better you get at it the more you want to do it so it feeds on itself good talking to you as ever Keith thank you so much Keith coing editor of NASA watch.com

Channel: DW News

Views: 71,149

Keywords: DW News, China's Lunar Probe, Chang'E Mission, Chang'e 6, space, far side of the moon

Id: iCU05RrXM1g

Length: 5min 3sec (303 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 04 2024