Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

ESA Director Josef Aschbacher with China’s Zhang Kejian, head of the China National Space Administration sign agreement on June 8, 2023.
Image credit: CNSA

China’s next robotic Moon landing probe, Chang’e-6, will carry payloads from the French and Europeans.

The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp revealed on Tuesday that two memorandums of understanding have been signed between the China National Space Administration (CNSA), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), the French space agency.

CNSA’s Zhang Kejian meets with Philippe Baptiste, chief of France’s CNES.
Image credit: CNSA

China’s Chang’e-6 mission is slated for takeoff in 2024, built to carry out sample-return from the lunar farside.

The European and French scientific instruments for lunar surface research are an ESA-supplied negative ion analyzer, while a detector to measure radon gas and its decay products on the Moon comes from CNES.

China’s last Moon mission, Chang’e-5, launched in 2020, retrieved and hauled back to Earth a total of 1,731 grams of lunar soil from the nearside.

Landing leg of Chang’e-5 Mooncraft.
Credit: CNSA/CLEP