Next month, a Chinese spacecraft called Chang’e-3 is scheduled to use braking rockets to lower itself gently onto the plains of Sinus Iridum, a broad swathe of lava flows on the near side of the Moon. The probe will then roll out a six-wheeled rover — the first machinery to explore the Moon’s surface since 1976, when the Soviet Luna 24 mission scooped up a handful of soil and flew it back to Earth.
The landing would be the latest step in China’s methodical and almost flawless space programme. The country has achieved a string of triumphs in crewed space flight over the past decade, including putting humans into orbit and docking two craft in space. China lost its first and only Mars probe soon after launch in 2011, but both of its lunar orbiters flew successfully.
If Chang’e-3 lands safely on the Moon, China will join the Soviet Union and the United States as the only nations to have successfully landed exploratory spacecraft there. “You cannot call the Chinese a rising or emerging space power any more,” says Bernard Foing, a lunar scientist at the European Space Agency in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. “They have shown they are very advanced.”
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