How to Watch China’s Launch to the Far Side of the Moon

China is launching a second lander to the lunar far side, which, if successful, will be the first mission in history to bring back a sample from the part of the moon that Earth never sees.

Unlike Earth, whose erosion and shifting crust constantly renew its surface, the moon remains frozen in time. Scientists hope that retrieving material from the far side will reveal information about the origin and evolution of the Earth-moon system.

The mission is called Chang’e-6, named after the Chinese moon goddess and pronounced “changa.”

Chang’e-6 is scheduled to launch on Friday at 5:27 a.m. Eastern time from the Wenchang space site on Hainan Island in southern China. A live broadcast of the launch is expected to be available on the China Global Television Network, a Chinese state news service, beginning at 4:30 a.m. Eastern time. You can watch it in the video player above.

Chang’e-6 will be carried to space by a Long March 5 rocket. If the weather does not cooperate on Friday, a backup launch window of the same duration has been reserved for the following day.

Chang’e-6 is the latest in a series of Chinese lunar missions designed to orbit or land on the moon. It will be the first probe to bring back samples from the lunar far side.

The first to visit that half of the moon, in 2019, was Chang’e-4, which included a rover to explore the moon’s Von Karman crater. One year later, Chang’e-5 gathered nearly four pounds of regolith from the moon’s near side and brought it to Earth. Scientists in other countries, including some in the United States, recently petitioned to study those samples.

It will take Chang’e-6 about a month after launch to reach the moon’s far side, and another month to come back.

An orbiter will circle the moon