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China will send an unmanned rover to the moon in early December, a spokesman for the Commission of Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense said on Tuesday. The lunar probe will be called the Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, a name that comes from a Chinese myth about a white rabbit that lives on the moon and was selected in an online poll.

The rover will be carried on the Chang’e-3 craft, which will attempt a soft landing on the moon. The rover, which weighs 140 kilograms, or just over 300 pounds, will spend three months exploring the moon’s surface.

An image of a prototype on the website of the Chinese space program showed a box-shaped, gold-colored vehicle with two broad solar panels and six wheels. The mission will examine the geology of the moon and collect soil samples including materials that could be commercially exploited, the space program said.

Li Benzheng, deputy head of the lunar exploration program, described the Chang’e-3 mission as one of the most difficult to date for China’s space program, according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency.

It is China’s third lunar mission, and its first attempted soft landing on the moon. The first Chang’e mission, named for a Chinese goddess, orbited the moon in 2007. The second orbited the moon in 2010 and 2011, then continued on into deeper space.

China’s space program sent its first astronaut into orbit in 2003 and has since carried out four additional manned missions. China has launched a space lab and plans to launch a space station before the end of the decade.

The program has been an important project for the government as China attempts to match the space flight accomplishments of the United States and Russia and demonstrate its technological capabilities in comparison with regional rivals like India, which launched a Mars orbiter on Nov. 5.

Mr. Li denied China was in a space race with India. “If India can achieve a Mars probe, that’s a great accomplishment,” he said, according to the China News Service.

“But as for China’s space activities, we’ve never thought we were in competition with anyone,” he said.