China on Friday successfully launched a 53-day-long lunar probe mission to collect samples for the first time from the far side of the Moon and bring them for scientific studies. The Chang’e-6 mission is tasked with collecting and then returning samples from the moon’s far side to Earth — the first endeavour of its kind in the history of human lunar exploration, China National Space Administration (CNSA) said.

The entire mission would last for 53 days. The far side of the moon is not visible from Earth.An hour after the launch, an official announced that Chang’e-6’s launch was “a complete success”.

 The CNSA has announced that scientific instruments from France, Italy and the European Space Agency/Sweden will be on board the lander of the Chang’e-6 mission and a Pakistani payload on the orbiter. This is the first time that China has included an orbiter from its all-weather ally Pakistan in its moon mission. According to reports from Pakistan quoting the Institute of Space Technology (IST), the satellite ICUBE-Q has been designed and developed by IST in collaboration with China’s Shanghai University SJTU and Pakistan’s national space agency Suparco. ICUBE-Q orbiter carries two optical cameras to image the lunar surface.

The lunar probe was carried by a Long March-5 Y8 rocket blasted off smoothly from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on the coast of China’s southern island province of Hainan. The launch was telecast live by state-run television.

Chang’e 6 consists of four components: an orbiter, a lander, an ascender and a re-entry module, according to CNSA. After collecting dust and rocks on the moon, the ascender will transport the samples to the lunar orbiter for transfer to the re-entry module, which will carry them back to Earth.

The CNSA said earlier that the mission is poised to make breakthroughs in key technologies, such as automatic sample collection, take-off and ascent from the far side of the moon. Meanwhile, the probe will carry out scientific exploration of the landing zone.

The Chang’e lunar exploration probe is named after the Chinese mythical moon goddess.The Chang’e 5 brought samples from the moon’s near side. Chinese said the analysis of the samples found they contained water in tiny beads embedded in lunar dirt. China also plans to have a lunar station on the moon in future.

A major space power, China in the past successfully launched unmanned missions to the moon, including landing a rover. China has also sent a rover to Mars and built a space station, which is currently in operation.

Earlier, China announced plans for a manned lunar landing by 2030.

India became the first country to land near the little-explored lunar south pole region last year when its Chandrayaan-3’s lander, carrying the Pragyaan rover successfully landed there. “Collecting and returning samples from the far side of the moon is an unprecedented feat. Now we know very little about the moon’s far side. If the Chang’e-6 mission can achieve its goal, it will provide scientists with the first direct evidence to understand the environment and material composition of the far side of the moon, which is of great significance,” said Wu Weiren, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and chief designer of China’s lunar exploration programme.

After the spacecraft reaches the moon, it will make a soft landing on the far side. Within 48 hours after landing, a robotic arm will be extended to scoop rocks and soil from the lunar surface, and a drill will bore into the ground. Scientific detection work will be carried out simultaneously.

After the samples are sealed in a container, the ascender will take off from the moon and dock with the orbiter in lunar orbit. The returner will then carry the samples back to Earth, landing in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The entire flight is expected to last about 53 days, the CNSA is quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua news agency. Remote-sensing images show the moon’s two sides are very different. The near side is relatively flat, while the far side is thickly dotted with impact craters of different sizes and has much fewer lunar mares than the near side. Scientists infer that the lunar crust on the far side is much thicker than that on the near side. But why that is so remains a mystery.

An impact crater known as the Apollo basin, located within the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) Basin on the far side of the moon, has been chosen as the primary target landing and sampling site for the Chang’e-6 mission, according to Wang Qiong, deputy chief designer of the Chang’e-6 mission.

“The whole mission is fraught with numerous challenges, with each step interconnected and nerve-wracking,” Wang said.

 “First-hand, direct samples from the moon’s far side are essential to giving us a deeper understanding of the characteristics and differences of the two sides of the moon, and to revealing the secrets of the moon,” said Zeng Xingguo, a scientist at the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

 To allow communication between Earth and the probe on the far side of the moon, China sent the Queqiao-2 relay satellite, whose name translates to “magpie bridge-2”, into a highly elliptical lunar frozen orbit earlier this year.

 Although the Chang’e-4 mission achieved the world’s first soft landing on the far side of the moon in 2019, Chang’e-6 still faces significant risks as the rugged terrain of the moon’s far side poses great challenges for its landing, space experts say.