China just made history by landing on the far side of the Moon

A handout photo made available by the Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center of China National Space Administration (CNSA) on 02 January 2019 shows an artist impression of the rover for China's Chang'e-4 lunar probe. China's Chang'e-4 lunar probe is expected to make the first-ever soft landing on the far side of the moon in coming days. Chinese lunar probe expected to land on moon in coming days, Space, China - 02 Jan 2019

China’s Chang’e-4 spacecraft touched down this morning in a crater on the far side of the Moon—a first for space exploration—Chinese state broadcaster CCTV confirmed at noon local time on Thursday (Jan. 3).

The manufacturer of the spacecraft also confirmed the successful landing on social platform Weibo (link in Chinese). The lander touched down at 10:26 am Beijing time.

Chang’e-4 took off on Dec. 8 local time and spent 26 days in space before landing in the Von Kármán crater, a 186-kilometer-wide (110 miles) region, located in an even larger impact crater called the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin that is 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) wide. Although Chang’e-4 reached lunar orbit just days after taking off, the solar-powered aircraft had to wait until sunlight returned the region to land and begin operations.

China hinted on Sunday (Dec. 30) that a landing was imminent, after its space agency said the probe was making final preparations for landing.

Details of the date and time of the landing were kept under wraps until the last moment, keeping space program trackers, and even scientists at centers that had contributed to the moon mission, guessing until the last moment. State-run media announced the landing earlier today in tweets, which were later deleted, likely because China wanted the first official confirmation of the historic landing to come via the state broadcaster.

The potential landing sites.

China hopes its Moon rover and its instruments can add to our knowledge of the kinds of events taking place in the solar system billions of years ago, and carry out experiments on how to sustain life on the Moon. The mission is also hoping to listen for signals from the universe’s early days using a radio antenna on board the Queqiao, the relay communication satellite that’s helping Chang’e-4 talk to scientists on earth.

Chang’e-4’s landing is the second significant space advance in 2019 after NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft sent back pictures of Ultima Thule this week from the edge of the solar system, the farthest object ever explored, some 4 billion miles from the Sun.

Soon after the news was confirmed, congratulations started pouring in.

China’s next step is to launch Chang’e-5 to get samples from the Moon’s near side later this year. China’s ultimate goal is to send humans back to the Moon, a goal it could probably achieve a little over a decade from now, according to Brian Harvey, author of   a history of China’s space program.