Chang'e 5 returns home with lunar samples
China's most sophisticated and challenging space adventure – the Chang'e 5 robotic lunar mission – ended successfully early Thursday morning with its load of rocks and dust from the moon landing on the grasslands in northern China.
The China National Space Administration said in a statement that Chang'e 5's reentry capsule touched down on its preset landing site in Siziwang banner of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region at 1:59 am.
The recovery team will make initial processing of the capsule and then use a plane to transport it to Beijing where it will be opened for technicians to remove the container holding lunar samples, the administration said.
The reentry and landing started around 1 am when mission controllers uploaded high-accuracy navigation data to the orbiter-reentry capsule combination that was traveling around the Earth.
