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The
robotic vehicle has stored the samples and will now dock with
the orbiting Chang'e-5 for the return journey to Earth.
China launched a robotic spacecraft on Nov. 24 to bring back
rocks from the moon in the first bid by any country to retrieve
samples since 1976.
Late on Tuesday, the Chang'e-5 spacecraft successfully deployed
a pair of landing and ascending vehicles onto the moon's
surface. The plan was to collect 2 kg (4.4 pounds) of samples.
The sample collection was completed after 19 hours, the space
agency said in its statement, without disclosing the total
weight of the samples collected.
China had planned to collect the samples over a period of about
two days, with the entire mission taking around 23 days.
The ascending vehicle would lift off from the lunar surface with
the samples, and dock with a module currently orbiting around
the moon.
The samples would then be transferred to a return capsule
onboard the orbiting module for delivery back to Earth.
If successful, the mission will make China only the third
country to have retrieved lunar samples after the United States
and the Soviet Union.
China made its first lunar landing in 2013.
In January 2019, the Chang'e-4 probe landed on the far side of
the moon, the first space probe from any nation to do so.
(Reporting by Liangping Gao and Ryan Woo; Editing by Karishma
Singh)
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