Moon landing: China scientists baffled as new lunar samples don’t match Apollo 11’s

 

The Chang’e 5 mission in 2020 marked China’s fifth-ever venture to the Moon but, more importantly, it was the country’s first sample-return mission. The Chinese spacecraft landed on the Moon on December 1, targetting a region previously unexplored by US astronauts or Soviet probes. This was the first sample-return mission since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 in 1976 and made China only the third country to collect samples from the Moon when Chang’e 5 landed back on Earth on December 16.