What happened to Chang’e 6 on the dark side of the Moon?

China’s Chang’e 6 mission successfully brought the first sample from the dark side of the Moon to Earth. The Chang’e 6 launched on May 3. The mission consists of four modules: the orbiter, the lander, the small rocket, and the gyrosphere capsule. The lander landed at Apollo crater on June 1 with the main task of scooping and drilling samples from the dark side of the Moon and placing them on a rocket to launch into orbit. The sample arrived on Earth on June 25, landing as expected on the grass in Inner Mongolia, according to Space.

Meanwhile, the Chang’e 6 lander remains on the Moon. The vehicle carries other equipment, including a panoramic camera and a small robotic rover. The latest information on the lander’s fate comes from the French space agency CNES, which designed the radon detector called DORN for the mission. “As planned, DORN stopped shortly before the rocket took off from the lunar surface while the lander remained dormant,” CNES said.

The rocket liftoff would likely have damaged the lander, although it would still be able to record the event. Therefore, all operations, including the automatic deployment of the rover and the taking of photos of the lander, were completed before the rocket took off, including activating another French instrument that records previously undetected charged particles on the lunar surface.

Any activity that takes place after the rocket lifts off will cease when darkness falls over the Apollo Crater. Unlike the Chang’e 3 and Chang’e 4 landers, which are still operating on the far and far sides of the Moon, Chang’e 6 does not carry the radioisotope heaters needed for long-term operations to help the craft survive the cold temperatures of the lunar night. Nighttime in the Apollo Crater begins on June 11 and the sun rises again on June 26.

Meanwhile, the rocket that carried samples from the Moon to the orbiting ship is also currently decommissioned. China’s space agency authorities did not reveal the fate of the rocket. Most likely, it fell to the Moon after docking with the orbiting spacecraft and transferring samples. The absence of signals from the rocket proves that it was controlled to collide with the Moon.

China appears to be using a similar sampling procedure to the Chang’e 5 mission that returned samples from the far side of the moon to Earth in late 2020. The re-entry capsule and its contents were delivered to Beijing on June 26. The samples will soon be transferred to a dedicated facility for storage, analysis, and distribution.

Meanwhile, the Thuoc Kieu 2 relay satellite, which coordinates the dark side sampling mission, will continue to orbit the Moon. It will support the current Chang’e 4 mission and the Chang’e 7 mission, which is aimed at the lunar south pole in 2026.