China's robotic probe to collect sample from lunar far side

China's upcoming lunar mission has garnered global attention for more reasons than one. The Chang'e 6 robotic probe will not only make an ambitious and unprecedented attempt to collect samples from the lunar far side, it will also carry three European science payloads to the site.

The mission holds great significance because the new samples will enable scientists to study and better understand the history and the physics of the moon, China Daily reports.

According to the China National Space Administration, the three foreign science payloads include a radon measuring instrument from France's national space agency that will help study the movement of lunar dust and some volatile chemicals between the lunar regolith, a layer of unconsolidated rocky material, and the lunar exosphere.

The second foreign science payload is a passive laser retroreflector from Italy's National Institute for Nuclear Physics that will be used as a laser range-finder for the Chang'e 6 lander.

The third payload, developed by the Swedish Institute of Space Physics with support from the European Space Agency, will be the first-ever dedicated negative ion instrument flown beyond Earth. It will seek to detect negative ions emitted from the lunar surface as a result of interaction with solar wind.

After collecting dust and rocks on the moon, the ascender will transport the samples to the lunar orbit for transfer into the reentry module, which will carry them to Earth.

Meanwhile, scientific instruments on the lander will continue to perform their operations as long as they have sufficient power.

The United States, the former Soviet Union and China have brought lunar samples to Earth, but none has ever obtained soil from the far side of the moon.

Although the far side had been previously photographed by spacecraft, no probe had ever touched down on it until China's Chang'e 4 mission, which landed in the South Pole-Aitken Basin in January 2019.