China's Chang'e-6 lunar probe, which blast off Friday, aims to retrieve rock samples from the far side of the Moon. It also takes international payloads along. Scientists from all over the world have gathered in Hainan as the mission started. Sun Ye has the details.

The Chang'e-6 mission is carrying multiple international science payloads, including a radon measuring instrument from France's national space agency, a passive laser retroreflector from Italy's National Institute for Nuclear Physics, the Negative Ions at the Lunar Surface instrument, with European Space Agency; and the ICUBE-Q cube-satellite from Pakistan.

PIERRE-YVES MESLIN DORN Principal Investigator of CNRS / IRAP "It's a series of first times for us. It's the first time that China and France are collaborating in the field of deep space exploration. It's also the first time that France will deploy a scientific instrument at the surface of the moon. And also it will be, I would say, the first time that radon, the gas that I want to measure, will be measured at the surface. It's the first time that we would be exploring the far side of the moon and have samples back from the far side of the moon. So it's very exciting. It's very exciting to me and almost as exciting to be working with the far side of the earth for this project."

NEIL MELVILLE-KENNEY NILS Technical Officer of ESA "And the groundwork that we are laying here with this mission, I hope, will serve a firm basis, indeed, for them to decide to collaborate more in the future."

PROF. QAMAR UL ISLAM Department of Space Science Institute of Space Technology, Pakistan "We are very happy, especially for our universities, for education institutions, for our students, it's a big motivation. And we had a very good cooperation from the Chinese side during all this project right from the beginning."

PROF. WU SHUFAN Director of Smart Satellite Technology Centre (SSTC) School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University "We have worked very well with Pakistan from the start, from the design. And this cooperation is paving the way for future cooperation."

SUN YE Haikou "China's lunar missions have long embraced international cooperation. For the future Chang'e 7 mission, six payloads from 7 countries have been selected to board. SY, CGTN, Haikou, Hainan Province."

Source: CGTN