China has launched its most advanced mission to the moon yet

China launched its Chang'e 5 spacecraft on 23 November, in the first mission designed to bring moon rocks back to Earth in more than four decades. The uncrewed Chang'e 5 probe will attempt to collect at least 2 kilograms of lunar dust and debris from the northern region of the Oceanus Procellarum, a previously unvisited area on the near side of the moon. If successful, the Chang'e 5 return mission will make China only the third country, after the US and the Soviet Union, to have retrieved samples from the moon. The last sample return mission was carried out in 1976 by the Soviet Union's Luna 24 robotic probe, which brought back around 170 grams to Earth. The Chang'e 5 launch happened early on Tuesday morning, Beijing time, from a Long March 5 rocket at a site in Wenchang on Hainan Island in the South China Sea.