China’s Chang’e-6 mission has returned nearly two kilograms of rock and soil from the moon’s far side, and the laboratory results are forcing scientists to rethink how the moon formed and evolved.

In the two-way race between the U.S. and China to put humans back on the moon, the lunar south pole is widely considered the most prized place to land. The South Pole–Aitken Basin—the moon’s largest ...

China’s space program, striving to land astronauts on the Moon by 2030, carried out a test flight of a new reusable booster and crew capsule late Tuesday (US time), and the results were spectacular.