The Change-5 space probe brought Moon samples to Earth for the first time in 44 years

The mission will improve the technologies needed to send Chinese astronauts to the Moon, something that Beijing set out to achieve in 2030, but analysis of the samples will also help to better understand the origins of the Moon, its formation and the volcanic activity on its surface.

CCTV public television broadcast images of the module descending from the sky at night with the help of a parachute, before landing on the snowy ground, according to reported the agency AFP.

Then trucks and scientists went to pick it up and the red flag with five yellow stars was planted near the artifact.

With this mission, China becomes the third country to have brought samples from the Moon, after the United States and the former Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s.

The president Xi Jin ping conveyed its "cordial congratulations" to the teams in charge of the mission, according to the Xinhua press agency .

"Your brilliant achievement will remain forever recorded in the memory of our country and our people ", said the president.

The last attempt to bring lunar samples was successfully carried out by the USSR in 1976, with the mission Soviet Luna 24, but the United States had also collected rocks during the manned mission Apollo 17 (1972) that were taken directly by the astronauts.

"It is a technological feat" that will allow China "to rely more on its technology" told the news agency AFP Chen Lan an analyst for the site GoTaikonauts .com specialized in the Chinese space program.

"Such a complex mission is undoubtedly still very elusive today, even for the United States, Russia and the other space powers," he added.

Chang'e 5, named for a goddess of The moon in Chinese mythology, was launched on November 24 from the tropical island of Hainan (southern China).

It landed on the Moon on December 1 near Mons Rümker in a mountainous area never before explored with the mission of collecting about two kilos of matter.

After taking the samples, the probe lander had to automatically ascend to lunar orbit, dock with the orbiter and transferring the load to the module back, complex operations that were conducted by remote control from the Earth.

"This has never been done until now, nobody" said about it Jonathan McDowell astronomer at the Harvard Center -Smithsonian of Astrophysics in the United States, for whom "the fact that everything has gone smoothly is a sign of the maturity of the Chinese space program" .

China invests billions of dollars in its space program, to catch up with Europe, Russia and the United States, and in 2003 it sent its first astronaut into space.

At the beginning of 2019 it managed to land a probe and a small remote-controlled robot on the far side of the Moon, a world first.

The Asian giant also just finished in June the constellation of its navigation system Beidou, rival of the American GPS and recently passed launched a probe to Mars, where it hopes to launch a small remote-controlled robot next year.