China launched a probe to the far side of the moon, stepping up its space race with the US

A Long March 5 rocket, carrying the Chang'e-6 mission lunar probe, at the Wenchang Space Launch Centre in southern China's Hainan Province on May 3, 2024.

HECTOR RETAMAL/Getty Images

• China launched the Chang'e-6 probe to collect samples from the far side of the moon.
• The probe lifted off from China's Wenchang Space Launch Center at 5.37 a.m. ET. 
• The mission forms part of China's plans to put humans on the moon by 2030. 

China on Friday launched a probe to collect samples from the far side of the moon, as it stepped up its space race against the US.

The Chang'e-6 probe successfully lifted off from China's Wenchang Space Launch Center at 5.37 a.m. ET.

The mission is expected to last 53 days. It will collect around two kilograms of lunar samples from the far side of the moon for analysis.

China is hoping Chang'e-6 can retrieve samples from the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the lunar far side. According to NASA, this is one of the largest and oldest impact features in the solar system.

If successful, it would be a major demonstration of the nation's spacefaring prowess, as no other country has brought samples back from the far side of the moon.

The terrain on the far side of the moon is quite different from its near side. "It lacks the large dark spots, called maria, that make up the familiar Man in the Moon on the near side. Instead, craters of all sizes crowd together over the entire far side," according to NASA.

"People want to know why this happened," Yi Xu, a professor at the Space Science Institute of Macau University of Science and Technology and a member of the Chang'e-6 science team told The New York Times. "If we can collect some samples on the far side, then we can maybe get some clues to these questions."

As Business Insider previously reported, the US and China have aggressive programs to return to the moon. The lunar surface is a strategic target for many nations vying to expand their people's reach beyond Earth.

China aims to bring humans to the moon by the end of 2030. NASA recently announced it was delaying its own mission to bring humans back to the moon. However, it still aims to get there before China with a predicted launch date in 2026.

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