The 21st-century space race is heating up.
China announced that, for the second time, it landed an uncrewed spacecraft on the far side of the moon. The nation’s Chang’e-6 lunar probe touched down in the South Pole-Aitken Basin, the largest impact basin on the moon, on June 2. The China National Space Administration previously landed in this region in 2020, and has ambitious plans to land humans on the lunar surface by 2030. (NASA remains the only country to land people on the moon.)
China’s space agency released video footage of the latest successful landing, which you can see in the video below, from the government-funded China Central Television, or CCTV. The lunar footage starts near the beginning of the short video, occurring between 7 and 45 seconds in. The sped-up frames show how the spacecraft hovered 100 meters (nearly 110 yards) above the surface, where it autonomously used lasers to locate lunar obstacles (like rocks or pits), before finally descending.
Landing was just the start of the mission’s lunar endeavors. Now, China aims to robotically collect samples and return them to Earth.
“The Chang’e-6 mission is the first human sampling and return mission from the far side of the moon,” the China National Space Administration said in a statement. “It involves many engineering innovations, high risks, and great difficulty.”
Now, after deploying solar panels, the craft will use drills and robotic arms to collect rocks and soil. Then, an ascent vehicle, currently sitting atop the lander, will launch off the moon, ferrying these prized samples to an awaiting orbiter in space. Ultimately, the samples will plunge back to Earth in a protected capsule — similar to China’s successful moon rock return in 2020.
China isn’t the only entity to robotically land on the moon in 2024 — though its landing appears to be the most successful. In January, Japan’s SLIM spacecraft landed on its head, though it made an unprecedented precision landing (coming within 10 meters, or some 30 feet, of its target). The following month, a mission largely funded by NASA snapped a leg during an off-kilter landing, and came to rest slumped on its side. These events underscore how challenging it remains to land on the moon — a world with virtually no atmosphere to help slow a spacecraft down, nor GPS guidance to assist with a controlled descent.
NASA, however, has successfully landed six crewed missions on the moon, over a half-century ago. And it aims to soon return. The space agency’s looming Artemis 3 mission is currently slated to land in September 2026. Astronauts will head to the moon’s south pole, where scientists suspect water is preserved in ancient, shadowy craters.
