The lander-ascender combination of Chang'e 5 robotic lunar probe finished gathering lunar samples and packed them in a vacuum container on Dec 3 night. （Photo provided to China Daily）
The robotic lunar mission ended successfully early on Thursday, when Chang'e 5's reentry capsule, carrying rocks and soil from the moon, landed on grassland in northern China.
China National Space Administration said in a statement that the reentry capsule touched down on its preset landing site in Siziwang Banner of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region at 1:59 am.
The capsule was transported by plane to Beijing on Thursday afternoon, where it will be opened by experts at the China Academy of Space Technology.
The reentry and landing processes started at around 1 am when mission controllers uploaded high-accuracy navigation data to the orbiter-reentry capsule combination that was traveling around Earth.
The capsule then separated from the orbiter about 5,000 kilometers above the southern Atlantic Ocean and began to descend toward Earth.
When the module was about 10 km above the ground, it released its parachutes and later smoothly landed on the snow-covered grassland. Recovery personnel sent from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center soon arrived at the landing site in helicopters and off-road vehicles.
The successful landing marked the completion of the historic 23-day Chang'e 5 expedition, the first in more than 40 years to bring lunar samples back to Earth, also making China the third country to achieve this feat, after the United States and the former Soviet Union.
Next, the sealed samples will be transferred to specially designed laboratories for analysis, experiments and tests.
A certain proportion of the samples will also be put on public display to enhance scientific awareness among the public, especially the younger generation, sources close to the mission said.
Chang'e 5, China's largest and most advanced lunar probe, consisted of four main components－an orbiter, lander, ascender and reentry capsule. The probe was launched by a Long March 5 heavy-lift carrier rocket early on Nov 24 at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in southern China's Hainan province, setting out on China's most difficult space mission and the world's first to retrieve lunar samples since 1976.
The probe separated into two parts－the orbiter-reentry capsule combination and the lander-ascender combination－while in lunar orbit on Nov 30.
