Historic journey from Chang'e 6 lifts off

Like its predecessor Chang'e 5, the Chang'e 6 spacecraft was designed and built by the China Academy of Space Technology in Beijing, a subsidiary of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, and also consists of four components – an orbiter, a lander, an ascender and a re-entry capsule.

Its operational process will basically mimic that of the Chang'e 5. After the probe reaches lunar orbit, the probe's components will separate into two parts, with the orbiter and re-entry capsule remaining in orbit while the lander and ascender approach the lunar surface.

When everything is ready, the lander/ascender combination will make a soft landing in the South Pole-Aitken Basin – a gigantic crater on the far side and also the largest, oldest and deepest basin recognized on the moon – and then start using a drill and a mechanical arm to gather surface and underground samples.

If everything proceeds smoothly, up to 2 kilograms of stones and soil will be collected and packed in a vacuumed metal container inside the ascender.

Once the collection operations are done, the ascender's engines will elevate it to lunar orbit to dock with the re-entry capsule and then will transfer samples to the module before undocking from the latter.

The combination of orbiter and re-entry capsule will then depart the lunar orbit and return to Earth's orbit, where the pair will break up and the re-entry capsule will conduct a host of complicated maneuvers to return to the Siziwang Banner Landing Site in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.