China plans to share data and samples that the Chang'e 5 probe obtained during its recent mission to the moon, based on international cooperation conventions, said the deputy head of the country's space agency on Thursday.
The lunar samples will be mainly used for scientific research, Wu Yanhua, deputy head of the China National Space Administration, told a press briefing.
The mission was the first in four decades to collect lunar samples, emulating the feats of the United States and the Soviet Union from the 1960s and 1970s -- and going a few steps further.
Scientists hope the samples will give insights into the Moon's origins and volcanic activity, though a more immediate focus was on how the mission showcased China's technological advances.
"China has been preparing for this for a long time," Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics researcher, told AFP.
"This was very important to them -- and still risky, as the automatic rendezvous, docking and sample transfer in lunar orbit had never been done before, by anyone. It's a sign of the maturity of the Chinese space effort that it went off so flawlessly."
In images broadcast on state television, the blackened capsule landed on snow-covered grasslands in darkness in the country's remote north.
A Chinese flag was quickly placed next to the capsule, reflecting the nationalist pride that the multi-billion-dollar space program engenders.
The official Xinhua news agency described the latest mission as one of the most challenging and complicated in China's aerospace history.
Chang'e-5 -- named after a mythical Chinese Moon goddess -- landed on the Moon on December 1.
During two days on the Moon, it collected two kilograms of material in an volcanic area called Mons Ruemker in the Oceanus Procellarum -- or "Ocean of Storms" -- which was previously unexplored, China's space agency said.
While there it also raised the Chinese flag, according to the agency.
The probe's departure was also the first time China had achieved take-off from an extraterrestrial body.
The module then went through the delicate operation of linking up in lunar orbit with the part of the spacecraft that brought the samples back to Earth.
The probe comprised separate craft to get to the Moon, land on it and collect the samples, get back up and then return the rocks and soil to Earth.
The return capsule entered the Earth's atmosphere at an altitude of about 120 kilometers.
When it was about 10 kilometers above land, a parachute opened and it landed smoothly, the space agency said.
