[31] The Chang'e 5 landing site is at 43.1°N (in latitude), 51.8°W (in longitude) in the Northern Oceanus Procellarum near a huge volcanic complex, Mons Rümker,[32] located in the northwest lunar near side.

[33] The Chang'e 5 landing site, named Statio Tianchuan,[34] is within the Procellarum KREEP Terrain,[35] with elevated heat-producing elements, thin crust, and prolonged volcanism.

This area is characterized by some of the youngest mare basalts on the Moon (~1.21 billion years old),[36] with elevated titanium, thorium, and olivine abundances,[36] which have never been sampled by the American Apollo program and the Soviet Luna programme.

[41] The electronics and systems on the Chang'e 5 lunar lander were expected to cease working on 11 December 2020, due to the Moon's extreme cold and lack of a radioisotope heater unit.

However, engineers were also prepared for the possibility that the Chang'e 5 lander could be damaged and stop working after acting as the launchpad for the ascender module on 3 December 2020, as turned out to be the case.

[42] On 16 December 2020, at around 18:00 UTC, the roughly 300 kg (660 lb) return capsule performed a ballistic skip reentry, in effect bouncing off the atmosphere over the Arabian Sea before re-entry.

The capsule, containing around 2 kg (4.4 lb) of drilled and scooped lunar material, landed in the grasslands of Siziwang Banner in the Ulanqab region of south central Inner Mongolia.

[43] The next day, it was reported that Chang'e 5's service module had performed an atmospheric re-entry avoidance burn and had been on-course to an Earth–Sun L1 Lagrange point orbit as a part of its extended mission.

[47] In February 2022, multiple amateur satellite trackers observed that CE-5 had entered DRO, making it the first spacecraft in history to utilize the orbit.

[45] The ~1,731 g (61.1 oz) of lunar samples collected by Chang'e 5 have enormous scientific importance, due to their abnormally young ages (<2.0 billion years old).

ESA tracked the spacecraft during the launch and landing phases while providing on-call backup for China's ground stations throughout the mission.

During the landing phase, ESA used its Maspalomas Station, located in the Canary Islands and operated by the Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (INTA) in Spain, to support the tracking efforts.

[63] The moon rocks that the mission returned to Earth were commended to be "the perfect sample to close a 2-billion-year gap" in the understanding of lunar geology.

[64] The open access to the samples by CNSA to a consortium of scientists from Australia, US, UK, and Sweden were hailed as "science done in the ideal way: an international collaboration, with free sharing of data and knowledge—and all done in the most collegial way possible.