The lunar home of China's Chang'e-4 lander , which landed on the far side of the moon Jan. 3, now has a name: Statio Tianhe.

Statio means a post or station in Latin and is also used in the formal name for the Apollo 11 landing site, Statio Tranquillitatis; Tianhe is an ancient Chinese name for the Milky Way sky river that is used in a folk tale called "The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl." The location is near the previously named Von Kármán Crater .

The International Astronomical Union, which oversees all formal names for features in space and on solar system bodies, unveiled the new landing mname for the Chang'e-4 mission today (Feb. 15), along with names for four other nearby sites explored by the lander and its Yutu 2 rover. One is a mountain now called Mons Tai, after a mountain in China's Shandong province just south of Beijing. [Chang'e 4's Photos from the Moon's Far Side!]

The other three newly named far-side features are all craters, now known as Zhinyu , Hegu and Tianjin , all of which honor Chinese constellations. The first two relate back to the same tale from which Tianhe comes: Zhinyu is the name of a fairy in the story, and Hegu includes the star Altair, which in China carries the name of the tale's cowherd.

Chang'e-4 and its rover, Yutu-2, have both gone dormant for their second frigid, two-week-long lunar night. When the sun rises again over their neighborhood, they should power back up and resume their scientific explorations of the far side of the moon.