Chang'e 5 lands on moon, starts surface operations

As the landing procedures began as scheduled at 10:57 pm, the lander-ascender combination of the 8.2-metric ton Chang'e 5 started its 7,500-newton-thrust engine to reduce its flying speed and began to descend toward the moon from about 15 kilometers above the lunar surface.

When the lander-ascender reached an altitude of 2.5 km, it conducted a rapid positional adjustment and continued approaching the lunar surface.

During the engine-assisted process, cameras on the lander-ascender took pictures of the landing site and transmitted them to computers to identify possible hazards on the surface such as large rocks so the craft could maneuver to avoid them.

The lander-ascender suspended its descent when it was about 100 meters from the moon and hovered for a short time to carry out accurate detection of obstacles before continuing to descend at a slower, steady speed.

At the last moment of the challenging operation when the craft was several meters above the surface, its engine stopped and it touched down on the lunar surface at 11:11 pm.

China's largest and most sophisticated lunar probe, Chang'e 5 was launched by a Long March 5 heavy-lift carrier rocket on Nov 24 at the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province.