Late Saturday night in Beijing, China's Chang'e 3 moon lander touched down on the lunar surface at the Bay of Rainbows in the Moon's northern hemisphere. China is now the third nation to have landed on the moon.

Chang'e 3 is carrying the six-wheeled, solar-powered Yutu rover, which will spend three months touring the lunar body's surface equipped with cameras, a robotic arm, scientific equipment, and a radar system.

The landing went smoothly, with Chang'e 3 taking about 12 minutes to get from lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon on autopilot. The Moon lander had launched from Earth on December 2, and it spent about six days in lunar orbit preparing for landing. The soft landing was the first on the Moon's surface in 37 years.

In Chinese legend, Chang'e is a goddess who travels to the Moon with her pet rabbit Yutu (which means “Jade Rabbit”). China's National Space Administration has launched two Chang'e spacecraft before Chang'e 3, both of which merely orbited the Moon.

In a Saturday post, NASA wrote:

Scientists using four NASA spacecraft currently studying our lunar neighbor may get an opportunity to gather new data from the expected December 14 landing of the Chang'e 3 lunar rover. US and international researchers view the pending arrival as a new scientific opportunity that could potentially enhance studies and observations of the lunar atmosphere. The robotic lander will arrive as NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), and two probes called the Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence, and Electrodynamics of Moon's Interaction with the Sun (ARTEMIS) continue their science missions. Although there is no cooperation between the US and China on these missions, US researchers could see potentially interesting science from the landing. The data will be made available to the international science community.

The rover will send real-time video back to Earth, and it will perform simple soil analysis with the instruments on board.