Chang'e 6
Chang'e 6 was a Chinese mission that returned the first samples from the far side of the Moon in 2024.
Chang'e 6 was launched by China in May 2024 and landed inside the Apollo crater in the huge South Pole–Aitken basin on the far side of the Moon. Because the far side never faces Earth, the mission relied on the relay satellite Queqiao-2 to communicate.
It collected about 1,935 grams of rock and soil by scooping and drilling, and its capsule landed in Inner Mongolia on 25 June 2024. These are the first samples ever brought back from the lunar far side.
Early studies reported basalts about 2.8 billion years old and older fragments, showing that volcanism happened on the far side too, as well as samples possibly related to the formation of the South Pole–Aitken basin, one of the oldest and largest impact structures in the Solar System. The samples help explain why the near and far sides of the Moon are so different in crust thickness and volcanic history.
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