By: Jackson Liu

China’s Chang’e 6 is the first spacecraft to reach the far side of the moon and bring back samples. It launched from China’s Hainan Province on May 3rd, 2024. It successfully came back to Earth on august 5th, 2024 with 4 pounds of lunar rock and soil and high quality photos of the moon’s surface. It landed in Mongolia.

The Chang’e 6 is a spacecraft whose goal is to retrieve samples from the far side of the moon, which is the side of the moon that’s never facing the earth. The far side has never been explored because there’s no way to contact earth since there’s a massive chunk of rock (the moon) between the earth and anything on the far side. The spacecraft landed inside a basin on the North Pole of the moon, one of the largest and oldest asteroid impact craters in the solar system. These samples may reveal the early history of the solar system and reveal the differences of the near side and the far side. The Chang’e 6 relied completely on artificial intelligence to guide it while on the moon. China next plans to explore the south pole of the moon with Chang’e 7 and 8.

The spacecraft is split into three parts: the lander, the orbiter, and the return capsule. The lander is the part that lands on the moon and retrieves samples. The orbiter is the part that orbits around the moon to put the lander on the moon and send it back on the return capsule, the part that returns the samples.

In a few years time, humans may have completely explored the moon while only exploring a small percent of the earth. Did you know that over 95% of the ocean and about 5% of land area is unexplored? And that’s not even counting all the caves out there.