The moon matters to China

China’s Chang’e-6 moon mission was launched on 3 May. It reached lunar orbit a few days later and began waiting for sunrise over its landing site on the moon’s far side. Chang’e-6 is named after the Chinese goddess of the moon and it will land on Sunday in a crater called Apollo – an ancient double-ringed walled plain caused by an asteroid smashing into the young moon. Apollo has been heavily damaged by subsequent impacts and in many places covered with lava flows and sprinkled with particles from newer impacts. It is as Buzz Aldrin said, a magnificent desolation. It is a region of great geological significance, since it contains rocks from the moon’s lower crust and the deeper mantle – a treasure trove of planetary history.

Chang’e-6 hopes to bring back rocks from the far side to Earth. Testing the composition of the soil could help narrow down theories about how both the moon and the solar system formed. But Chang’e also plans to raise the Chinese communist flag over the crater, and the symbolism of this has not gone unnoticed. The flag of the CCP will preside over a site named after the US moon landings. Nearby are craters named after fallen American astronauts, specifically the crew of ill-fated Space Shuttle Columbia. It’s a symbolic gesture certainly but also a literal one, for the far side of the moon – which never sees Earth – belongs to China, the only country to have landed there, and the only country since the former USSR in 1976 to have brought back samples from the moon.

China has realised what the United States forgot, at least until recently: that the moon is a special kind of prize.