BEIJING: China landed an uncrewed spacecraft on the far side of the moon on Sunday, overcoming a key hurdle in its landmark mission to retrieve the world’s first rock and soil samples from the dark lunar hemisphere.
The landing elevates China’s space power status in a global rush to the moon, where countries including the United States are hoping to exploit lunar minerals to sustain long-term astronaut missions and moon bases within the next decade.
The Chang’e-6 craft, equipped with an array of tools and its own launcher, touched down in a gigantic impact crater called the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the moon’s space-facing side at 6:23 a.m. Beijing time (2223 GMT), the China National Space Administration said.
The mission “involves many engineering innovations, high risks and great difficulty,” the agency said in a statement on its website. “The payloads carried by the Chang’e-6 lander will work as planned and carry out scientific exploration missions.”
The successful mission is China’s second on the far side of the moon, a region no other country has reached. The side of the moon perpetually facing away from the Earth is dotted with deep and dark craters, making communications and robotic landing operations more challenging.
Given these challenges, lunar and space experts involved in the Chang’e-6 mission described the landing phase as a moment where the chance of failure is the highest.
“Landing on the far side of the moon is very difficult because you don’t have line-of-sight communications, you’re relying on a lot of links in the chain to control what is going on, or you have to automate what is going on,” said Neil Melville-Kenney, a technical officer at the European Space Agency working with China on one of the Chang’e-6 payloads.
“Automation is very difficult especially at high latitudes because you have long shadows which can be very confusing for landers,” Melville added.
The Chang’e-6 probe launched on May 3 on China’s Long March 5 rocket from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on the southern island of Hainan, reaching the lunar vicinity roughly a week later before tightening its orbit in preparation for a landing.
Chang’e-6 marks the world’s third lunar landing this year: Japan’s SLIM lander touched down in January, followed the next month by a lander from US startup Intuitive Machines.
The other countries that have sent spacecraft to Earth’s nearest neighbor are the then-Soviet Union and India. The United States is the only country to have landed humans on the moon, starting in 1969.
SAMPLING THE MOON
Using a scoop and drill, the Chang’e-6 lander will aim to collect 2 kg (4.4 pounds) of lunar material over two days and bring it back to Earth.
The samples will be transferred to a rocket booster atop the lander, which will launch back into space, tag up with another spacecraft in lunar orbit and return, with a landing in China’s Inner Mongolia region expected around June 25.
If all goes as planned, the mission will provide China with a pristine record of the moon’s 4.5 billion-year history and yield new clues on the solar system’s formation. It will also allow for an unprecedented comparison between the dark, unexplored region with the moon’s better understood Earth-facing side.
A simulation lab for the Chang’e-6 probe will develop and verify sampling strategies and equipment control procedures, China’s official Xinhua news agency said. It will use a full-scale replica of the sampling area based on exploration results on the environment, rock distribution and lunar soil conditions around the landing site.
China’s lunar strategy includes its first astronaut landing around 2030 in a program that counts Russia as a partner. In 2020 China conducted its first lunar sample return mission with Chang’e-5, retrieving samples from the moon’s nearer side.
The US Artemis program envisions a crewed moon landing by late 2026 or later. NASA has partnered with space agencies including those of Canada, Europe and Japan, whose astronauts will join US crews on an Artemis mission.
Artemis relies heavily on private companies, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, whose Starship rocket aims this decade to attempt the first astronaut landing since NASA’s final Apollo mission in 1972.
On Saturday Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa canceled a private mission around the moon he had paid for, which was to have used SpaceX’s Starship, citing schedule uncertainties in the rocket’s development.
Boeing and NASA postponed the company’s first crewed launch of Starliner, a long-delayed capsule meant to become the second US space taxi to low-Earth orbit.
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China lands on moon’s far side in historic sample-retrieval mission
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China lands on moon’s far side in historic sample-retrieval mission
- Chang’e-6 craft touched down in gigantic crater on moon’s space-facing side
- The landing elevates China’s space power status in a global rush to the moon
Thai villagers stay behind to guard empty homes as border clashes force mass evacuations
SURIN: Fighting that has flared along the Thai-Cambodian border has sent hundreds of thousands of Thai villagers fleeing from their homes close to the frontier since Monday. Their once-bustling communities have fallen largely silent except for the distant rumble of firing across the fields.
Yet in several of these villages, where normally a few hundred people live, a few dozen residents have chosen to stay behind despite the constant sounds of danger.
In a village in Buriram province, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) from the border, Somjai Kraiprakon and roughly 20 of her neighbors gathered around a roadside house, keeping watch over nearby homes. Appointed by the local administration as Village Security Volunteers, they guarded the empty homes after many residents were forced to flee and with fewer security officials stationed nearby than usual.
The latest large-scale fighting derailed a ceasefire pushed by US President Donald Trump, which halted five days of clashes in July triggered by longstanding territorial disputes. As of Saturday, around two dozen people had been reported killed in the renewed violence.
At a house on the village’s main intersection, now a meeting point, kitchen and sleeping area, explosions were a regular backdrop, with the constant risk of stray ammunition landing nearby. Somjai rarely flinched, but when the blasts came too close, she would sprint to a makeshift bunker beside the house, built on an empty plot from large precast concrete drainage pipes reinforced with dirt, sandbags and car tires.
She volunteered shortly after the July fighting. The 52-year-old completed a three-day training course with the district administration that included gun training and patrol techniques before she was appointed in November. The volunteer village guards are permitted to carry firearms provided by relevant authorities.
The army has emphasized the importance of volunteers like Somjai in this new phase of fighting, saying they help “provide the highest possible confidence and safety for the public.”
According to the army, volunteers “conduct patrols, establish checkpoints, stand guard inside villages, protect the property of local people, and monitor suspicious individuals who may attempt to infiltrate the area to gather intelligence.”
Somjai said the volunteer team performs all these duties, keeping close watch on strangers and patrolling at night to discourage thieves from entering abandoned homes. Her main responsibility, however, is not monitoring threats but caring for about 70 dogs left behind in the community.
“This is my priority. The other things I let the men take care of them. I’m not good at going out patrolling at night. Fortunately I’m good with dogs,” she said, adding that she first fed a few using her own money, but as donations began coming in, she was able to expand her feeding efforts.
In a nearby village, chief Praden Prajuabsook sat with about a dozen members of his village security team along a roadside in front of a local school. Around there, most shops were already closed and few cars could be seen passing once in a while.
Wearing navy blue uniforms and striped purple and blue scarves, the men and women chatted casually while keeping shotguns close and watching strangers carefully. Praden said the team stationed at different spots during the day, then started patrolling when night fell.
He noted that their guard duty is around the clock, and it comes with no compensation and relies entirely on volunteers. “We do it with our own will, for the brothers and sisters in our village,” he said.
Beyond guarding empty homes, Praden’s team, like Somjai, also ensures pets, cattle and other animals are fed. During the day, some members ride motorbikes from house to house to feed pigs, chickens and dogs left behind by their owners.
Although his village is close to the battlegrounds, Praden said he is not afraid of the sounds of fighting.
“We want our people to be safe… we are willing to safeguard the village for the people who have evacuated,” he said.
Yet in several of these villages, where normally a few hundred people live, a few dozen residents have chosen to stay behind despite the constant sounds of danger.
In a village in Buriram province, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) from the border, Somjai Kraiprakon and roughly 20 of her neighbors gathered around a roadside house, keeping watch over nearby homes. Appointed by the local administration as Village Security Volunteers, they guarded the empty homes after many residents were forced to flee and with fewer security officials stationed nearby than usual.
The latest large-scale fighting derailed a ceasefire pushed by US President Donald Trump, which halted five days of clashes in July triggered by longstanding territorial disputes. As of Saturday, around two dozen people had been reported killed in the renewed violence.
At a house on the village’s main intersection, now a meeting point, kitchen and sleeping area, explosions were a regular backdrop, with the constant risk of stray ammunition landing nearby. Somjai rarely flinched, but when the blasts came too close, she would sprint to a makeshift bunker beside the house, built on an empty plot from large precast concrete drainage pipes reinforced with dirt, sandbags and car tires.
She volunteered shortly after the July fighting. The 52-year-old completed a three-day training course with the district administration that included gun training and patrol techniques before she was appointed in November. The volunteer village guards are permitted to carry firearms provided by relevant authorities.
The army has emphasized the importance of volunteers like Somjai in this new phase of fighting, saying they help “provide the highest possible confidence and safety for the public.”
According to the army, volunteers “conduct patrols, establish checkpoints, stand guard inside villages, protect the property of local people, and monitor suspicious individuals who may attempt to infiltrate the area to gather intelligence.”
Somjai said the volunteer team performs all these duties, keeping close watch on strangers and patrolling at night to discourage thieves from entering abandoned homes. Her main responsibility, however, is not monitoring threats but caring for about 70 dogs left behind in the community.
“This is my priority. The other things I let the men take care of them. I’m not good at going out patrolling at night. Fortunately I’m good with dogs,” she said, adding that she first fed a few using her own money, but as donations began coming in, she was able to expand her feeding efforts.
In a nearby village, chief Praden Prajuabsook sat with about a dozen members of his village security team along a roadside in front of a local school. Around there, most shops were already closed and few cars could be seen passing once in a while.
Wearing navy blue uniforms and striped purple and blue scarves, the men and women chatted casually while keeping shotguns close and watching strangers carefully. Praden said the team stationed at different spots during the day, then started patrolling when night fell.
He noted that their guard duty is around the clock, and it comes with no compensation and relies entirely on volunteers. “We do it with our own will, for the brothers and sisters in our village,” he said.
Beyond guarding empty homes, Praden’s team, like Somjai, also ensures pets, cattle and other animals are fed. During the day, some members ride motorbikes from house to house to feed pigs, chickens and dogs left behind by their owners.
Although his village is close to the battlegrounds, Praden said he is not afraid of the sounds of fighting.
“We want our people to be safe… we are willing to safeguard the village for the people who have evacuated,” he said.
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