China's Chang'e-6 has collected the world's first samples from the far side of the moon.

It happened in an area that's been preselected, but the exact points of contact between the probe and the moon are new, and to some extent, unknown, even to those who've worked on the mission for years.

Jin Shengyi, of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, is one of the professionals who knows the process like the back of his hand. He says the first step to successful sample gathering is having exact replicas made of the probe's work area, some 380,000 km away.