CHANG’E-3

CHINA’S MOON MISSION

By Eric Adams and Sophie Bushwick

Chang'e-3

When the Chang’e-3 probe reached the moon in December 2013, China became the third nation to successfully stick a soft lunar landing, and the first to do so in almost 40 years. The mission deployed a rover, Yutu, to study the soil and crust structure of the lunar surface. Yutu has experienced some glitches, but that hasn’t dampened the China National Space Administration’s ambition: to bring lunar samples back to Earth by Chang’e mission 5.|