More than 50 years after the US first planted the Stars and Stripes there, China has planted its flag on the Moon. The photographs from the China National Space Administration show the five-starred Red Flag still holding on the windless lunar surface. Before it left the Moon with rock samples on Thursday, they were taken by a camera on the Chang’e-5 space probe.
Two previous Chinese lunar missions had flags on the coatings of the crafts – so the moon could not be affixed to either. During the manned Apollo 11 mission in 1969, the US planted the first flag on the Moon. During subsequent missions up to 1972, five more US flags were planted on the lunar surface.
NASA cited satellite photos in 2012 as suggesting that five of the flags were still standing, but experts cited in media reports suggest they are likely to have been whitewashed by the glare of the sun.The first flag was said to have been put too close to the Apollo lunar module by astronaut Buzz Aldrin and was, he said, possibly blown away when the module blasted off.