China's Chang'e 5 probe has completed its orbital manoeuvre and is now approaching the flight path that will lead it to Earth, the Xinhua news agency quoted the China National Space Agency as saying.
After spending six days in the lunar orbit and collecting samples from the surface of the Moon, the Chinese probe is expected to return in mid-December and land in northern China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
The mission was launched on 24 November. Chang'e 5 is China's first successful lunar docking mission and has the potential to be the first to bring Moon samples back to the country. The Chinese government initiated a series of space exploration programmes in the 1950s, as a reaction to the rapid development of space technologies in the USSR and the US.