Well, it's due to return to Earth in the coming hours.

Carrying fresh samples of moon, rocks and debris, Chinese ground crews are awaiting the landing of the unmanned mission and with it the first lunar samples in more than 45 years.

Chang, of five, was one of the most complicated and challenging missions in China's aerospace history.

When the rocket was launched on November 23 it was a source of national pride.

The probe was made up of four modules.

One was the lander, which is dug for rocks and soil.

The materials were then transferred into a return capsule for the journey back to Earth.

Current lunar program consists of three phases orbiting, landing and returning.

The Shanghai five will carry out the third phase, bringing moon samples back to the earth for the first time.

We hope this will be a success.

It's the first time in four decades that material has been brought back from the moon.

China's space ambitions and no secret on have been growing for years.

In 2003, it's secured a major breakthrough when it became the third country in the world to send a man into space.

10 years later, China hit another milestone, successfully landing an unpiloted spacecraft on the moon.

It was the first soft landing since the Soviet Union's success in 1976 more Chinese cheers in January 2019 in a global first, a lunar probe touching down on the far side of the moon, boosting China's space ambitions.

Mars is also in its sights this year.

Beijing launching an unmanned probe to the Red Planet.

Yes, you Back in July, China put the final satellite into orbit for its Chinese navigation system.

Countries rival to the US own GPS.

But this lunar mission to bring back material from the moon was one of China's most ambitious to date, right, and joining us now from the Netherlands is Mark Makor Quran.

He's senior adviser for science and exploration at the European Space Agency.

Mark, thanks for joining us.

This is a complex mission, and it could still end in failure if the spaceship crashes upon landing.

How challenging is the technical side of this mission?

I think it's important to realize that China could have done this in a simpler way.

It could have had a direct return of lunar samples from the surface, for example.

But it's chosen to do it in a way which is complicated because it leads to the next step.

It leads to the ability to send humans to the moon.

So, for example, landing on the surface with an orbiter going around the moon and then rendezvous in with that orbiter, reconnecting with it, getting rid of one piece of the spacecraft, flying back with another these aerial the things that the Apollo missions did in the 19 sixties and seventies.

So I think it it is more challenging than it needs to be what it's doing today, but for a very, very specific purpose.

Is that the main purpose in to put humans on the moon?

Well, in this case, of course, they're bringing samples back from an interesting location.

A place called Manz Room occur in the oceans pro Salar um, which is the ocean of storms on the moon.

And in fact, it's a place that no other mission has bean to before, whether Soviet or American, the samples there that the minerals on the moon are much younger than in other locations.

So that's actually important for trying to understand the evolution of the movement.

What happened there billions of years ago on Also, it's important because those samples will be, as I say, different from the ones we brought back before, and we're very interested everybody.

ALS.

The international countries interested in going back to the moon are really curious about how to extract resources from the minerals on the moon, water, oxygen on other things which we can use when we actually go and sit on the moon for a longer period of time.

Eso you'll be sharing the information.

But China has been putting so much effort in space exploration in recent years.

Are we heading into a future where China leads the race and the U.

S and Europe will be struggling to keep up?

Yeah, well, yes, this this narrative about the new space race is constant, but I actually don't think it's like that at all.

We're collaborating very actively with China on scientific missions.

We've also sent some of our astronauts to train with China s, so there's a possibility in the future that we might actually fly on the Chinese space station, for example, on at the same time, the United States and Europe, along with Canada and Japan and perhaps with Russia as well, are looking to build a thing called the lunar gateway.

We've been building hardware for years to go back to the moon.

Just delivered that to NASA, so it's ready to fly astronauts back to the moon.

Three European astronauts will be going to the moon in the next decade, so but this is all part.

I think of a very different approach to lunar exploration, and the rest of the solar system are much more collaborative approach.

So I think, yes, China is doing very impressive work at the moment.

We shouldn't deny that for a moment, but it's something which we're all doing together, and I think it's very exciting time for a space exploration in the next decade.

Indeed, Mark McCaughrean from the European Space Agency, Thank you very much.