‘China Launches Chang’e-5 Moon Probe to Bring Back Lunar Rocks’

China successfully launched its Chang'e-5 lunar mission to collect rocks from the moon - the first attempt by any country since the 1970s.

The Chang'e-5 probe will attempt to collect 2 kilograms (4.5 pounds) of samples in Oceanus Procellarum.
Composition: The spacecraft is made up of an orbiter, a lander, an ascender and a returner.
Time-period: From start to finish, the mission will last more than 20 days.
Once in the moon's orbit, the probe will deploy a pair of vehicles to the surface to drill into the ground and collect soil and rock samples.
If successful, the mission will make China only the third country to have retrieved lunar samples, following the United States and the Soviet Union decades ago.

Chang’e Program

Chang’e 5, China’s first-ever sample-return effort, is the sixth and most ambitious mission in the Chang’e program of robotic lunar exploration, which is named after a moon goddess in Chinese mythology.
China launched the Chang’e 1 and Chang’e 2 orbiters in 2007 and 2010, respectively, and the Chang’e 3 lander-rover duo touched down on the moon’s near side in December 2013.
The Chang’e 5T1 mission launched a prototype return capsule on an eight-day trip around the moon in October 2014, to help prepare for Chang’e 5.
And in January 2019, Chang’e 4 became the first mission ever to ace a soft landing on the moon’s mysterious far side.
Chang’e 4’s lander and rover are still going strong, as is the Chang’e 3 lander. (The Chang’e 3 rover died after 31 months of work on the lunar surface.)

Where will it land?

The mission will land in the Mons Rumker area of the huge volcanic plain Oceanus Procellarum ("Ocean of Storms"), portions of which have been explored by a number of other surface missions, including NASA’s Apollo 12 in 1969.
It is a massive lava plain.
This large dark spot, stretching about 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) wide, could be a scar from a giant cosmic impact that created an ancient sea of magma.

The previous attempts

US astronauts brought back 382 kilograms (842 pounds) of rocks and soil during the Apollo program, between 1969 and 1972.
The Soviet Union collected 170.1 grams (6 ounces) of samples in 1976.
In the decades since data from orbital remote sensing missions has shown there is a much greater diversity of rock types and ages on the moon than existing samples suggest.

Significance of the mission

These samples could help scientists understand more about the moon's origins and foundations and set the foundation for more complex sample retrieval missions in the future, potentially on other planets.
The mission may help answer questions such as how long the moon remained volcanically active in its interior, and when its magnetic field -- key to protecting any form of life from the sun's radiation - dissipated.