Researchers from a university in Hong Kong are planning to apply for lunar soil samples from the far side of the moon which China’s historic Chang’e-6 mission brought back to Earth for the first time ever last month.
Polytechnic University also said on Wednesday that it had recently secured the loan of lunar soil samples collected by the Chang’e-5 mission in 2020 which would be used for investigations into a search for water on the moon. The China National Space Administration’s Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Centre loaned the two samples of regolith or lunar soil.
“The lunar regolith is very very precious, even if you’re able to get 400 milligrams – which is 0.4g – even for one crystal or one particle of the lunar regolith, we will be able to actually tell a lot of stories from there,” said Yung Kai-leung, chair professor from PolyU’s industrial and systems engineering department.
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China’s Chang’e-6 mission returns to Earth with first samples from moon’s far side
China’s Chang’e-6 mission returns to Earth with first samples from moon’s far side
He said the scientific properties would be studied to understand its components “such as the water content in the form of molecules and the conditions in the formation of the regolith in order to discover how the moon was formed as well as that of the universe”.
“The Chang’e-5 mission was the only lander that could [bring] back around 1.7kg of lunar regolith to Earth in the last 40 years and it was from a region many millions of years younger than previously brought back samples over 44 years ago,” Yung said.
Some of the samples were collected by the sampling and packaging equipment developed and manufactured at PolyU.
Of the 1.7kg lunar regolith from the near side of the moon from the Chang’e-5 mission, the university received 400mg of a surface soil sample and 42.6mg of a subsurface soil sample, with researchers saying such resources would give them an edge in applying for samples from the Chang’e-6 mission.
“At present, China is the only country that has brought back lunar soil samples from the far side of the moon,” said Professor Wu Bo, director of the Research Centre for Deep Space Explorations at the university.
“We hope to be able to compare and contrast the samples from the Chang’e-5 and Chang’e-6 missions to compare and analyse samples from the near and far sides of the moon.”
Wu added that they decided to carry out research on the topic of water because it would be important for future missions if a base was set up on the moon. Water was a crucial component to tackle, to enable astronauts to be on the moon for an extended period, he noted.
China’s Chang’e-6 lunar probe touched down on Earth on June 25, bringing back the world’s first rock samples – around 2kg – from the far side of the moon.
President Xi Jinping hailed the mission as “another landmark achievement of China’s effort to build itself into a powerful country in aerospace and science and technology”.
