News Digest

Sky’s the limit: China completes first mission to moon and back

China completed its first return mission to the moon early Saturday with the successful re-entry and landing of an unmanned probe, in the latest step forward for Beijing’s ambitious space programme. The probe landed safely in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region, state news agency Xinhua said, citing the Beijing Aerospace Control Center. The probe’s mission was to travel to the moon, fly around it and head back to Earth, the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND) said in a statement at its launch eight days ago. The mission was launched to test technology to be used in the Chang’e-5, China’s fourth lunar probe, which aims to gather samples from the moon’s surface and will be launched around 2017.

The probe took some incredible pictures of the Earth and the moon.

China’s state news agency, Xinhua

Prior to re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere, the unnamed probe was travelling at 11.2 kilometres per second (40,000 kmh), a speed that can generate temperatures of more than 1,500 degrees Celsius. To slow it down, scientists let the craft “bounce” off Earth’s atmosphere before re-entering again and landing. Beijing sees its multi-billion-dollar space programme as a marker of its rising global stature and mounting technical expertise. The military-run space project, which has plans for a permanent orbiting station by 2020 and eventually to send a human to the moon, is also seen as evidence of the ruling Communist Party’s success in turning around the fortunes of the once poverty-stricken nation.