China bid: Bring back materials from moon

WENCHANG, China -- China launched an ambitious mission today to bring back material from the moon's surface for the first time in more than 40 years -- an undertaking that could boost human understanding of the moon and of the solar system more generally.

Chang'e 5 -- named for the Chinese moon goddess -- is the country's boldest lunar mission yet. If successful, it would be a major advance for China's space program, and some experts say it could pave the way for bringing samples back from Mars or even a crewed lunar mission.

The four modules of the Chang'e 5 spacecraft blasted off early today atop a Long March-5Y rocket from the Wenchang launch center along the coast of the southern island province of Hainan.

The typically secretive administration had previously only confirmed the launch would be in late November. Spacecraft typically take three days to reach the moon.

The mission's key task is to drill almost 7 feet beneath the moon's surface and scoop up about 4.4 pounds of rocks and other debris to be brought back to Earth, according to NASA. That would offer the first opportunity for scientists to study newly obtained lunar material since the American and Russian missions of the 1960s and 1970s.

The Chang'e 5 lander's time on the moon is scheduled to be short. It can only stay one lunar daytime, or about 14 Earth days, because it lacks the radioisotope heating units to withstand the moon's freezing nights.

The lander will dig for materials with its drill and robotic arm and transfer them to what's called an ascender, which will lift off from the moon and dock with the service capsule. The materials will then be moved to the return capsule to be hauled back to Earth.

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The technical complexity of Chang'e 5, with its four components, makes it "remarkable in many ways," said Joan Johnson-Freese, a space expert at the U.S. Naval War College.

"China is showing itself capable of developing and successfully carrying out sustained high-tech programs, important for regional influence and potentially global partnerships," she said.

In particular, the ability to collect samples from space is growing in value, said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Other countries planning to retrieve material from asteroids or even Mars may look to China's experience, he said.

While the mission is "indeed challenging," McDowell said China has already landed twice on the moon with its Chang'e 3 and Chang'e 4 missions, and showed with a 2014 Chang'e 5 test mission that it can navigate back to Earth, reenter and land a capsule.

Chang'e 4 -- which made the first soft landing on the moon's relatively unexplored far side almost two years ago -- is currently collecting full measurements of radiation exposure from the lunar surface, information vital for any country that plans to send astronauts to the moon.

China in July became one of three countries to have launched a mission to Mars, in China's case an orbiter and a rover that will search for signs of water on the red planet. The CNSA says the spacecraft Tianwen 1 is on course to arrive at Mars around February.