Chang'e-5 Lunar Grab-and-Go Mission Is Already Flying Back to Earth

After a whirlwind trip to the Moon’s surface, China’s Chang’e-5 mission has successfully launched an ascent vehicle, packed with lunar dust and debris, back into space on Thursday. 

The spacecraft blasted off from a region called Mons Rümker, on the northwest near side of the Moon, just two days after it touched down alongside its partner landing robot, according to the China Lunar Exploration Program. 

The lander has spent the past 48 hours drilling into the surface and loading a few pounds of lunar rocks into the ascent vehicle's sample container. It remained on the Moon and is expected to perish in the cold conditions when lunar night falls next week.

Now that the ascent vehicle has launched, it is scheduled to rendezvous with Chang’e-5’s orbiter component sometime in the next two days. The vehicle will transfer its precious Moon material into a sample-return capsule and will make its way back to Earth, carried by the orbiter. 

Assuming that Chang’e-5 continues to nail all the remaining steps of its mission, it will become the first mission to return samples of the Moon to Earth for over four decades. The Soviet lander Luna 24 was the last to achieve this difficult feat, which it also accomplished at a breakneck pace spanning roughly three weeks in August 1976. 

Chang’e-5 is on a similarly tight schedule. The mission launched from Earth on November 23 and its homecoming is expected sometime in mid-December, when the capsule will parachute back to Earth in Mongolia.

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that the sample-return capsule would return to Earth alone. It will actually be carried with the orbiter. The article has been updated to reflect this.