Long March 5 blasts into the skies

A Long March 5 heavy-lift carrier rocket blasted off at 5:27 pm today at the coastal Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province, elevating the historic Chang'e 6 robotic mission up into skies.

If everything goes according to plan, the 20-story-tall colossal rocket will fly for a short time before placing the 8.35-metric-ton Chang'e 6, the heaviest lunar probe China has ever built, on an Earth-moon transfer trajectory.

The liftoff marked the opening of a complex, challenging journey of the lunar spacecraft toward the far side of the moon.

If the Chang'e 6 mission succeeds, it will become the first time for rocks and dust to be recovered from the little-known lunar far side, which never faces us due to tidal forces on Earth.

So far, humankind has fulfilled 10 lunar sample-return missions, but all of the samples were collected from the near side on the moon, leaving scientists around the world calling for a daring attempt to bring substances from the lunar far side, which never faces Earth.

As one of the world's most powerful operational rockets, the Long March 5 model was built by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology in Beijing, the nation's major rocket maker and a subsidiary of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp.

The 57-meter-tall rocket has a liftoff weight of nearly 870 metric tons and is capable of ferrying spacecraft weighing up to 25 tons－the combined weight of 16 mid-size car－to a low-Earth orbit, or 14 tons to a geosynchronous transfer orbit.

Friday's flight has become the second time for the Long March 5 rocket model to lift a lunar mission.

The first time the rocket model was used in a lunar expedition took place in November 2020 as it placed the Chang'e 5, the country's first lunar sample-return mission, into a moon-bound trajectory.