An animation showing the Chang'E 5 rover on the moon.
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NEW CHINA / SIPA
A Chinese probe carrying soil samples from the Moon returned to Earth on Thursday in the first such mission in 40 years, the Xinhua news agency said.
The Chang'e 5 space probe's return module has landed in the Inner Mongolia region of northern China, Xinhua said, citing the Chinese space agency.
Billions of investments
Beijing is looking to catch up with the United States and Russia after taking decades to match the achievements of its rivals and investing billions in its military space program.
The Chang'e 5 probe, named after a moon goddess in Chinese mythology, landed on December 1 and then began its return trip two days later.
Scientists hope the samples collected will allow them to learn more about the origins of the Moon, its formation and volcanic activity on its surface.
With this mission, China became the third country to collect samples from the Moon, after the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s.
A first since 1976
It was the first such attempt since the successful Soviet Union Luna 24 mission in 1976. The mission consisted of collecting two kilograms of material in an area known as Oceanus Procellarum - or "Ocean of the storms ”- a vast lava plain hitherto unexplored, according to the scientific journal Nature.
It is a new step in the Chinese space program, which struck a big blow in early 2019 by landing a machine on the far side of the Moon, a world first.
China hopes to have a manned space station by 2022 and eventually send humans to the moon.
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