On June 2, China successfully landed an uncrewed craft on an unexplored location on the far side of the moon.

According to the China National Space Administration (CNSA), the Chang'e-6 touched down on the moon’s South Pole Aitken Basin at 6.23 am Beijing time on Sunday morning.

Chang'e 6 is a robotic lunar exploration mission by CNSA. Like its predecessors in the Chinese Lunar Exploration Programme, the spacecraft named after the Chinese moon goddess Chang'e was launched on May 3 and orbited the moon for several days in accordance with the landing sequences before the lander touched down.

As China's second sample return mission, the rover, with its robotic scoop, drilled and took samples from the lunar surface.

The samples were launched back into lunar orbit on June 3 to dock with the orbiter, which will spend four and a half days before heading back to earth.

Once in earth’s orbit, the re-entry capsule with the samples will be released for a soft landing in the deserts of China’s Inner Mongolia region sometime around June 25.

Chang'e 6 will also be doing scientific experiments and investigations on the lunar surface, such as looking for the existence of water ice. The overall mission is expected to last about 53 days.

As part of human exploration of the moon, numerous space missions have been undertaken to study earth's natural satellite.

On August 23, 2023, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) successfully landed the spacecraft Chandrayaan-3 on the moon.

The spacecraft consisted of a lunar orbiter, the Vikram lunar lander and the Pragyan rover.

The main scientific objective of the mission was to map and study the variations in lunar surface composition, as well as the location and abundance of lunar water.

The Soviet Union’s Luna 2 was the first spacecraft to reach the moon's surface successfully, on September 14, 1959.

In 1966, Luna 9 became the first spacecraft to achieve a controlled soft landing.

Luna 10 became the first spacecraft to orbit the moon and was the first artificial satellite of the moon, gathering important data on the strength of the moon's magnetic field, its radiation belts and the nature of lunar rocks.

Between 1968 and 1972, the US carried out crewed missions to the moon as part of the Apollo space programme.

Apollo 8 was the first crewed mission to enter orbit in December 1968, followed by Apollo 10 in May 1969.

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Six missions landed humans on the moon, beginning with Apollo 11 in July 1969, during which Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to walk on the moon.

The ultimate objectives of space superpowers – the US, Russia, China and India – are to establish bases on the moon for further exploration of deep space and to use the moon as a launchpad for crewed missions to other planets such as Mars.

This requires the determination of the amount of water available on the moon’s surface for the production of oxygen and hydrogen to be used as fuel and to sus