BEIJING, May 3 (Xinhua) -- The following is a summary of published science and technology news of China.

CHANG'E-6 LUNAR PROBE LAUNCH

China on Friday launched the Chang'e-6 spacecraft to collect and return samples from the moon's mysterious far side -- the first endeavor of its kind in the history of human lunar exploration.

A Long March-5 rocket, carrying the Chang'e-6 spacecraft, blasted off from its launchpad at the Wenchang Space Launch Site on the coast of China's southern island province of Hainan at 5:27 p.m. (Beijing Time).

Approximately 37 minutes after liftoff, the Chang'e-6 spacecraft separated from the rocket and entered its planned Earth-moon transfer orbit, which had a perigee altitude of 200 kilometers and an apogee altitude of about 380,000 kilometers, according to the China National Space Administration.

SOIL CO2 EMISSIONS

A team of Chinese researchers has discovered that soil carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are significantly more sensitive to climate warming in areas where permafrost has collapsed than in areas where it has not.

This finding, published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience, sheds new light on the relationship between permafrost carbon-climate feedback and future global warming scenarios.

The researchers from the Institute of Botany under the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that the warming-induced increase in soil CO2 release was about 5.5 times higher in thermokarst features than in adjacent non-thermokarst landforms.

NEW SPECIES

Chinese researchers have discovered a new species of impatiens in southwest China's Guizhou Province and named it Impatiens beipanjiangensis.

The yellow flowers are described in a paper published in a recent edition of the journal PhytoKeys.

The species is named after the Beipanjiang River Basin in Panzhou City, where a team of botanists first found the specimen in October 2019 during a field survey, said Xu Jian, a member of the team and a researcher with the Guizhou Botanical Garden. Enditem

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