Lunar sample in the context of Moon landing

The physical exploration of the Moon began when Luna 2, a space probe launched by the Soviet Union, made a deliberate impact on the surface of the Moon on 14 September, 1959. Prior to that the only available means of lunar exploration had been observations from Earth. The invention of the optical telescope brought about the first leap in the quality of lunar observations. Galileo Galilei is generally credited as the first person to use a telescope for astronomical purposes, having made his own telescope in 1609. The mountains and craters on the lunar surface were among his first observations.

Human exploration of the Moon since Luna 2 has consisted of both crewed and uncrewed missions. NASA's Apollo program has been the only program to successfully land humans on the Moon, which it did six times on the near side in the late 20th century. The first human landing took place in 1969, when the Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong touched down on the surface in the region of Mare Tranquillitatis, leaving scientific instruments upon the mission's completion and returning lunar samples to Earth. All lunar missions had taken place on the lunar near side until the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon was made by the CNSA robotic spacecraft Chang'e 4 in early 2019, which successfully deployed the Yutu-2 robotic lunar rover. On 25 June 2024, CNSA's Chang'e 6 conducted the first lunar sample return from the far side of the Moon.

Chang'e 5 (Chinese: 嫦娥五号; pinyin: Cháng'é wǔhào) was the fifth lunar exploration mission in the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program of CNSA, and China's first lunar sample-return mission. Like its predecessors, the spacecraft is named after the Chinese moon goddess, Chang'e. It launched at 20:30 UTC on 23 November 2020, from Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on Hainan Island, landed on the Moon on 1 December 2020, collected ~1731 g (61.1 oz) of lunar samples (including from a core ~1 m deep), and returned to the Earth at 17:59 UTC on 16 December 2020.

Chang'e 5 was the first lunar sample-return mission since the Soviet Union's Luna 24 in 1976. New lunar minerals, including Changesite-(Y) and two different structures of the titanium compound Ti2O, were identified from the samples returned from the mission, making China the third country to discover a new lunar mineral. The mission also made China the third country to return samples from the Moon after the United States and the Soviet Union.