China on Tuesday returned a storage container filled with soil from the far side of the moon to Earth, the latest achievement in its ambitious program to explore the moon and other parts of the solar system.

The China National Space Administration’s Chang’e-6 returner returned soil samples after a 53-day mission, highlighting China’s space ambitions.Growing capabilitiesand is another victory in a series of lunar exploration missions since 2007, which have been completed almost flawlessly so far.

“Chang’e-6 is the first mission in human history to bring back samples from the far side of the moon,” Xiao Long, a planetary geologist at the China University of Geosciences, wrote in an email. “This is a big event for scientists around the world,” he added, “and something that all of humanity deserves to celebrate.”

That sentiment and the prospect of an international lunar sample exchange underscore hopes that China’s robotic missions to the moon and Mars will help advance scientific understanding of the solar system. That contrasts with views in Washington and elsewhere that Tuesday’s achievement is the latest milestone in the 21st century’s geopolitically charged space race.

In February of this year, a privately operated U.S. spacecraftLanding on the MoonIn order to allow Americans to return to the lunar surface, NASA is also advancing the Artemis program, but the next mission of the program – astronauts flying around the moon – has beenDelayed due to technical issues.

China is also working to expand its presence on the moon, sending more robots and eventually astronauts to the moon in the coming years.

To achieve this goal, China has taken a slow and steady approach, implementing a robotic lunar exploration program designed decades in advance. Named after China’s moon goddess Chang’e, the program’s first two missions orbited the moon to photograph and map the lunar surface. Then, in 2013, Chang’e-3 landed on the lunar surface and released its Yutu-1 rover. In 2019, Chang’e-4 became the first spacecraft to visit the far side of the moon, sending its Yutu-2 rover to the lunar surface.

A year later, China’s Chang’e 5 landed on the moon and returned 1,731 grams of lunar regolith samples to Earth. This achievement made China the third country after the United States and the Soviet Union to achieve the complex orbital planning of collecting samples from the moon.

According to Qian Yuqi, a lunar geologist at the University of Hong Kong, the orbital operations of Chang’e-5 and Chang’e-6 are test runs for China’s future manned lunar missions, which will require landing on the lunar surface and then launching human astronauts back into space, just like the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s.

China is committed to sending astronauts to the moon, but its long-term strategy is to gain scientific benefits by understanding the solar system.

The Chang’e-5 sample is younger than lunar material collected by the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s. It is mostly composed of basalt, or cooled lava from ancient volcanic eruptions.

Two research teams led by Chineseget conclusionbelieving that these basalts are about 2 billion years old, which means that volcanic activity on the moon extends back at least 1 billion years longer than the time range inferred from the US Apollo and Soviet lunar rover samples.

Other studies of the material have ruled out theories about how the moon’s interior could have warmed enough to produce volcanic activity.Discoverthe radioactive elements in the moon’s interior are not high enough to cause volcanic eruptions, but these elements may decay and generate heat.Research resultThis rule out water in the lunar mantle as a potential source of internal melting that could lead to volcanic activity.

Chang’e 6Launched on May 3whose scientific ambitions are even greater: to bring back material from the far side of the moon. The moon’s surface is mostly vast dark plains where ancient lava once flowed. But the far side has fewer plains. It also has more craters and a thicker crust.

And because that half never faces Earth, it’s impossible to communicate directly with a lander on the far side of the moon, making it difficult to reach it successfully. The Chinese space agency relied on two satellites previously launched into lunar orbit, Queqiao and Queqiao-2, to stay in touch with Chang’e-6 during its visit.

The spacecraft uses the same technology as Chang’e 5 to reach the moon and then bring samples back to Earth.

After a few weeks in lunar orbit, Chang’e 6landingThe lander, equipped with a robotic scoop and drill, spent two days collecting lunar rocks and dust from the surrounding environment and beneath the lunar surface.

It then stowed the material away. The mission deployed a micro-rover, which snapped a photo of the lander raising a small Chinese flag. Then, on June 3, the ascender brought the sample container back to lunar orbit. On June 6, the material reunited with the spacecraft that remained in orbit, ready to begin its journey back to Earth.

On Tuesday, the sample container re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere and then fell to the surface in Siziwang Banner, Inner Mongolia by parachute, where ground personnel worked to recover it.

When scientists obtain soil from the far side of the moon, they will compare the composition of the newly discovered basalts with that of the basalts on the near side of the moon. This may help them infer how the moon’s volcanic activity caused the two halves of the moon to evolve differently.

The mission team will also look for materials in the surrounding area that were blown away from their original locations when comets and asteroids hit. Dr. Qian said that if these impacts were strong enough, they could have blown out materials from the moon’s lower crust and upper mantle. This would help understand the structure and composition of the moon’s interior.

Lava from these impacts could also provide clues about when the South Pole-Aitken basin formed and how old it was, during a period scientists think asteroids and comets blasted through the inner solar system.

Dr Qian said this period “completely changed the geological history of the moon” and was also a “critical period in the evolution of the Earth”.

Clive Neal, a planetary geologist at the University of Notre Dame, called it an ambitious goal, but he looked forward to what the samples would discover once they returned. “It’s been very good,” he said of China’s string of successes on the moon so far. “I’m rooting for them.”

However, strained political relations will make it challenging for U.S. scientists to collaborate with Chinese researchers on samples from the far side of the moon.

The Wolf Amendment, enacted in 2011, prohibits NASA from using federal funds for bilateral cooperation with the Chinese government. Federal officials recently approved a waiver that allows NASA-funded researchers to apply for access to lunar samples brought back by Chang’e 5. But another bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in June would prohibit universities with research ties to Chinese institutions from receiving funding from the U.S. Department of Defense.

In the future, China is focusing on the lunar south pole, where Chang’e 7 and 8 will explore the environment and search for water and other resources. China hopes to send a manned mission to the moon by 2030. Ultimately, China plans to establish an international base at the lunar south pole.

NASA’s Artemis program is also targeting the lunar south pole. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has said that these simultaneousprojectIt’s called the China-U.S. competition.

Many scientists don’t buy that argument. Dr. Neal said that after American astronauts landed on the lunar surface before Soviet cosmonauts in 1969, resources to study the moon dropped dramatically. “I don’t like international space races because they are unsustainable,” he said. “The race is to win. Once you win, then what?”

He added: “I think it’s important to think of space as something that brings us together, rather than something that divides us.”

Chang’e-6 also carried international payloads from countries including France and Pakistan, which Chinese researchers see as a good sign for the future.

“Lunar exploration is a common cause for all mankind,” Dr Xiao said, adding that he hoped to strengthen international cooperation, “especially between space powers like China and the United States”.