The year is set to start with a moon landing by China’s Chang’e-4 mission. The spacecraft launched in December and reached lunar orbit four and a half days later. If its lander and rover succeed, Chang’e-4 will be the first spacecraft to make a soft, or intact, landing on the moon’s far side — the side that always faces away from Earth.

The Chinese spacecraft may be the first of a series of lunar landings.

An Israeli company, SpaceIL, is scheduled to send a lander to the moon in February. Originally, SpaceIL was one of four finalists in Google’s Lunar X Prize. But the prize went unclaimed when none of the companies were able to meet a launch deadline of March 31, 2018. If the Israeli mission succeeds, it would make that country only the fourth to complete a soft landing on the moon, after the United States, the Soviet Union and China .

But Israel could get beaten to that distinction by India, which may launch Chandrayaan-2, the nation’s first moon lander and rover, as soon as late January. (Chandrayaan-1, an orbiter, launched in 2008.) The mission was expected to launch last year, but met with delays.

[How to follow the Chandrayaan-2 moon landing.]

This lunar activity may serve as a setup for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, when humans first walked on the moon. And China has the opportunity to bookend 2019 with a second moon mission, Chang’e-5, which could land on the moon late in the year, collect samples and later return them to Earth for study.