On Thursday, December 17, China successfully brought 4.4 pounds of lunar rocks and material back from the moon. It would appear that the Space Race and great power competition may be on once again.

Until Thursday, lunar samples had not been collected since 1976, making this recent event impossible to ignore for the U.S. and Russia. The three-week mission was accomplished with an unmanned spacecraft, known as Chang’e-5. The spacecraft traveled to Mons Rümker, a volcanic plain in an area of the moon that has never been explored, according to National Geographic.

Chang’e-5 deployed a lander onto the moon, which drilled and collected samples, and stored them in the module. The lander then launched into lunar orbit and eventually linked up with Chang’e-5, which returned the module to Earth.

NASA is not permitted to work directly with the China National Space Administration. Additionally, there are many restrictions in place for cooperative studies with China, which will prevent many of our scientists from being able to collect data and research from these lunar samples. The United States never allowed China access to the lunar rocks collected on the Apollo missions, so it can be expected that China will do the same with these new samples.