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		</div><p>A Chinese spacecraft has lifted off from the moon with a load of lunar rocks, the first stage of its return to Earth, the government space agency reported.</p>
<p>Chang’e 5, the third Chinese spacecraft to land on the moon and the first to take off from it again, is the latest in a series of increasingly ambitious missions for Beijing’s space programme, which also has an orbiter and rover headed to Mars.</p>
<p>The Chang’e 5 touched down Tuesday on the Sea of Storms on the moon’s near side.</p>
<p>Its mission was to collect about 2kg (4lbs) of lunar rocks and bring them back to Earth, the first return of samples since Soviet spacecraft did so in the 1970s.</p>
<p>Earlier, the US Apollo astronauts brought back hundreds of pounds of moon rocks.</p>
<p>The landing site is near a formation called the Mons Rumker and may contain rocks billions of years younger than those retrieved earlier.</p>
<p>The ascent vehicle lifted off from the moon shortly after 11pm Beijing time Thursday (1500 GMT) and was due to rendezvous with a return vehicle in lunar orbit, then transfer the samples to a capsule, according to the China National Space Administration.</p>
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<p>The moon rocks and debris were sealed inside a special canister to avoid contamination.</p>
<p>It was not clear when the linkup would occur. After the transfer, the ascent module would be ejected and the capsule would remain in lunar orbit for about a week, awaiting the optimal time to make the trip back to Earth.</p>
<p>Chinese officials have said the capsule with the samples is due to land on Earth around the middle of the month.</p>
<p>Touchdown is planned for the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, where China’s astronauts have made their return in Shenzhou spacecraft.</p>
<p>Chang’e 5’s lander, which remained on the moon, was capable of scooping samples from the surface and drilling two metres.</p>
<p>While retrieving samples was its main task, the lander was also equipped to extensively photograph the area, map conditions below the surface with ground-penetrating radar and analyse the lunar soil for minerals and water content.</p>
<p>Right before the ascent vehicle lifted off, the lander unfurled what the space administration called the first free-standing Chinese flag on the moon.</p>
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<p>The agency posted an image, apparently taken from the lander, of the ascend vehicle firing its engines as it took off.</p>
<p>Chang’e 5 has revived talk of China one day sending astronauts to the moon and possibly building a scientific base there, although no timeline has been proposed for such projects.</p>
<p>China launched its first temporary orbiting laboratory in 2011 and a second in 2016. Plans call for a permanent space station after 2022, possibly to be serviced by a reusable space plane.</p>
<p>While China is boosting co-operation with the European Space Agency and others, interactions with Nasa are severely limited by US concerns over the secretive nature and close military links of the Chinese programme.</p>
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