Looking closely at the Long March 5B rocket that blasted off on May 3 from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on Hainan Island, one would have seen the European Space Agency ESA logo on its side. It took the Chang’e 6 mission to the moon, an awe-inspiring sight, and another flawless launch.

This is another sample-return lunar mission following the highly successful Chang’e 5. It will be the world’s first if it can bring back rock samples from the lunar far side. This is the side we never see because the Moon orbits on its axis at the same rate as its orbital period around the Earth.

The far side looks very different due to the geological processes and impact history, as China’s just-published lunar atlas makes clear. As a result, the returned samples will also be very different and are expected to provide a science “bonanza” for both Chinese and international scientists.

The Chang’e 6 mission is more complex than its Chang’e 5 equivalent because there is no direct line of sight for communication between the lunar lander and the Earth. It requires a relay satellite to act as a bridge. Chang’e 6 has a series of international payloads from France, Italy, and Sweden based on the lunar lander itself and, interestingly, a Pakistan CubeSat called ICUBE-Q that will be deployed in lunar orbit.

ICUBE-Q will image the lunar surface and measure the lunar magnetic field. All the European countries lending a lander science payload are members of the 22-country ESA consortium — hence the prominent ESA logo on the side of the Long March Rocket. Good to see.

It is no surprise that France has contributed an important science payload to Chang’e 6 as it has often seen beyond manufactured geopolitics to underlying opportunities and national self-interest in science and other fields.

Their Chang’e 6 instrument has the rather alien name of “DORN” which, like much nomenclature attached to facilities and payloads in science, is an acronym for “Detection of Outgassing Radon”. This important science payload is intended to investigate how volatile compounds within lunar rocks and even lunar dust itself get transferred between the “regolith” (which means broken stones and dust that make up a mixed layer of material that lies over the underlying bedrock) and the “lunar exosphere”.

French and Chinese cultural exchanges have long been evident in diverse lifestyle choices and more — in finance, tech, and science. I hope engagement and cooperation can strengthen further

Contrary to popular belief, the moon possesses a very weak and extremely tenuous atmosphere made up of unusual trace gases that result from outgassing from the lunar surface. These are eventually lost from lunar gravity, so these gases escape and never stay to build up a real atmosphere.

If successful, this mission will provide fundamental research data to keep Chinese and international scientists occupied for years. The geology of the lunar far side has a more ancient, preserved geology and rich impact crater topography compared to the “smoother” side we see from Earth. Hence, completely different geological samples may be returned from the South Pole-Aitken basin landing site, which is thought to reflect the state when it first formed around 4.5 billion years ago.

Samples from the South Pole-Aitken basin may be of ancient material ejected from deep within the lunar mantle by the enormous impact that created the basin itself. Researching the composition of the near and far side lunar samples may improve our understanding of how the moon was formed and the early evolution of the inner solar system.

Though this lunar mission has been mainly for science purposes, I greatly respect France’s more independent-minded foreign policy, as recent votes in the United Nations sessions clearly show. I wish other Western countries would do likewise more often. This is why it was pleasing to learn of the recent Sino-French cooperation forum held in Paris on May 2, where an extraordinary statement was made by the former French prime minister Laurent Fabius where he mused that China and France “share certain close — even identical — visions on global governance”.

I would also like to highlight remarks made by Professor Jiang Xiaojuan from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who said that “technological innovation requires international cooperation more than ever”. The Chang’e 6 lunar mission is a great example of this.

French and Chinese cultural exchanges have long been evident in diverse lifestyle choices and more — in finance, tech, and science. I hope engagement and cooperation can strengthen further.

The author is director of the University of Hong Kong’s Laboratory for Space Research.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.