China's Chang'e 5 capsule lands on Earth with the first moon samples in 44 years

A capsule loaded with lunar samples landed in Inner Mongolia on Dec. 16 at 12:59 p.m. EST, capping China's historic Chang'e 5 mission.

Image Credit: CNSA

The last such moon delivery came courtesy of the Soviet Union's Luna 24 mission, which returned about 170 grams of material in 1976. Chang'e 5's haul should be much larger — about 2 kilograms. With Chang'e 5's apparent success — mission teams still need to inspect and assess the returned sample — China has become just the third nation to bring moon material to Earth. The other two are the Soviet Union and the United States, which hauled home about 382 kg of lunar rocks and dirt during the six Apollo surface missions between 1969 and 1972.

How will the Sun die ? | Death of a Star | Space Library

The sun has been shining for approximately 4.6 billion years, but like all stars, it will eventually come to an end. Although the sun's demise is not imminent, its death is a natural part of the life cycle of stars, and scientists have been studying it for decades. iStock When the sun runs out of fuel, it will begin to cool and contract. The sun's outer layers will expand, causing it to become a red giant. During this phase, the sun will grow to be much larger than its current size, swallowing up the inner planets, including Earth. This event is predicted to occur in about 5 billion years from now, based on current estimates. Eventually, the sun will run out of fuel completely, and it will collapse in on itself. This will cause a massive explosion, known as a supernova, which will release a vast amount of energy into the universe. The sun's core will be compressed to form a white dwarf, a small, extremely dense star that will slowly cool over bill...

Selfie from Mars

This self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at "Namib Dune," where the rover's activities included scuffing into the dune with a wheel and scooping samples of sand for laboratory analysis. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The Butterfly Nebula

NGC 6302 also known as The Butterfly Nebula is a bipolar planetary nebula in the constellation Scorpius. The structure in the nebula is among the most complex ever observed in planetary nebulae. This sharp and colorful close-up of the dying star's nebula was recorded in 2009 by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3, installed during the final shuttle servicing mission. Cutting across a bright cavity of ionized gas, the dust torus surrounding the central star is near the center of this view, almost edge-on to the line of sight. Molecular hydrogen has been detected in the hot star's dusty cosmic shroud. Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble

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