BEIJING, April 24. /TASS/. China gave 1.5 grams of lunar soil to Russia as a research sample during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Beijing in February 2022, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) reported on Monday.

"In February 2022, when Russian President Vladimir Putin visited China, the People’s Republic of China handed lunar soil samples weighing 1.5 grams over to Russia for scientific research purposes," the CNSA said in a statement on its website. In turn, Russia gave China lunar samples gathered in 1970 by Luna-16, the first Soviet robotic lunar probe to perform a sample return mission to the Moon and back, during Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow in March 2023, the CNSA specified.

Also, the CNSA gave visiting French President Emmanuel Macron a similar quantity of lunar soil earlier this month during his state visit to China.

The lunar soil samples Beijing presented to France and Russia were collected by China’s Chang’e 5 mission in December 2020.

The unmanned Chang’e 5 mission was launched to the Moon from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on Hainan Island on November 24, 2020. Twenty-three days later, it returned some 2 kg of lunar soil samples to Earth. Chinese experts analyzed the samples to obtain valuable data, which is being used, among other things, for a project to build a research base on Earth’s only natural satellite.

After lunar soil was returned to Earth, the CNSA announced plans to establish international cooperation for conducting lunar soil analysis. Lunar samples collected by China are currently being analyzed by researchers from Australia, Great Britain, Russia, the United States, France and Sweden.