China is going to the moon again – but what are its plans?

China has successfully shot to the moon again, with the growing space superpower looking to add another complex engineering mission to its list of achievements.

After putting an astronaut – or taikonaut – in space for the first time in 2003, his capabilities have developed at almost the speed of light in the twenty years since.

The country now has a manned space station, a Mars rover, and was the first country to land on the far side of the moon.

Five years later, it attempts to repeat this feat with Chang’e 6, a mission to return samples from the moon’s surface to the ‘dark’ side.

The probe will be carried on a Long March-5 YB rocket that will lift off from the Wenchang launch center in the southern tropical island province of Hainan on Friday evening local time – Friday morning in Britain.

In 2020, China became the first country to return samples from the near side of the moon since the US Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s. Analysis of the samples revealed that they contained water in small grains embedded in lunar dirt, offering hope for future longer-term missions and the possibility of using the moon as a launch pad for further space exploration.

Chang’e 6 will land in the Aitken Basin at the south pole, the moon’s largest and oldest impact crater. Material brought back by the spacecraft could help scientists understand more about what happened in the solar system billions of years ago.

However, that’s not the only reason why the far side of the moon has long fascinated scientists. Because it faces permanently away from Earth, it also provides an ideal spot for radio astronomy, looking out into the cosmos without the noise created by the technology of eight billion people getting in the way.

However, Chang’e 6 is not only important for science. It will also prove the country’s ability to take off from the far side of the moon, a difficult task that requires a relay satellite to bounce signals from Earth back to the spacecraft that has already been launched.

Success will mark a big step toward China’s goal of landing boots on the moon by 2030, with hopes of a permanently manned base in the future.

It is this ambition, combined with the rapid expansion of its space capabilities, that led NASA chief Bill Nelson to warn that China could try to take over parts of the moon within a few years.

Speaking before a House Appropriations Committee, Nelson said he fears the nation’s civilian programs launched in the name of science could in fact be covert military operations.

“China has made extraordinary progress, especially in the last decade, but they are very secretive,” he said. “We believe that a large part of their so-called civilian space program is a military program. And I think we are in fact in a race.

“Their latest date that they’ve said they’re going to land (on the moon) is 2030, but that keeps going up.

“My concern would be if China got there first and suddenly said, ‘OK, this is our territory, stay out of it.’

“Obviously you don’t want to interfere with each other, but don’t go in and declare that this whole area is suddenly yours.”

However, Beijing has said it remains committed to building a “shared” future together with other countries.

Chang’e 7, set to launch in 2026, will explore the moon’s south pole in search of water, while Chang’e 8, two years later, will be used to assess where in the region could be suitable for future infrastructure to construct.

Chang’e-6 will carry cargoes from France, Italy, Sweden and Pakistan, while Chang’e-7 will carry cargoes from Russia, Switzerland and Thailand.

US law prohibits NASA from any cooperation, direct or indirect, with China. It is this law that has prompted China to build its own space station, and with the International Space Station set to be decommissioned by the end of this decade, it could soon be the only country with a manned base in orbit .

The US aims to return astronauts to the moon by 2026.

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