(Yicai Global) Sept. 21 -- China will launch the Chang'e-5 probe before the end of the year to bring lunar soil samples back to Earth after a soft landing and sampling on the lunar surface, Yu Dengyun, deputy chief designer of China's lunar exploration project, announced at the 2020 China Space Conference held yesterday, Xinhua News Agency reported.

The Chang'e-5 probe, which weighs 8.2 tons, will be carried by the Long March-5 rocket from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in South China’s Hainan province.

Chang'e-5 is expected to set four records in Chinese spaceflight, being the first automatic sampling on the lunar surface, the first take-off from it, the first unmanned docking in lunar orbit at a distance of 380,000 kilometers, and the first Moon soil samples returned to Earth, Yu said.

China has many tasks in store for the Chang'e series of landers, including collecting soil samples and returning them from the lunar south pole, detecting resources there, conducting key technological experiments and applications on the Moon’s surface, building unmanned lunar research stations, and finally a manned landing, Yu added.

China's Chang'e lunar exploration projects have achieved lunar-orbiting flight and a safe soft landing and done scientific exploratory work on the surface of Earth’s only planetary satellite since the Chang’e-1 mission in October 2007. The Chang’e-5 project will also bring the soil back to Earth safely for the first time.

Editor: Ben Armour