The Chang’e-4 lunar landing is just but the first of the many victories China has set its eyes upon in the race to dominate space.

A Triumphant Landing

While everyone is starting out their new year with sets of resolutions they would likely to abandon in the coming months, China has kicked off 2019 with something incredible that no other nation has ever yet done before.

On January 3 of this year, China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced that it has successfully landed its moon lander, Chang’e-4 on the far side of the moon. Through history, many probes have been launched but ended up crash-landing onto this far-reaching side of the Earth’s lone satellite.

The so-called “dark side of the moon” is the lunar hemisphere that never faces Earth because of the moon’s rotation. But technically, this side receives the same amount of sunlight as with the other Earth-facing side.

Chang’e’s accompanying rover, the Yutu-2, or Jade Rabbit-2 carries with it a host of scientific instruments required to complete the mission to study the moon’s interior structure. It also carries precious cargoes needed to conduct certain biological experiments.

For China and for the rest of the world, the spacecraft’s successful lunar touchdown is seen as a huge and historic milestone in space exploration.