Beijing: A Chinese lunar rover successfully landed on the far side of the moon on Thursday, becoming the world’s first spacecraft to survey the moon’s uncharted mysterious side, a giant leap in cosmic exploration and a major boost to the Communist giant’s quest to become a space superpower. The rover Chang'e-4, which is named after the moon goddess in Chinese mythology, landed at 10:26 a.m. Beijing time in the South Pole-Aitken Basin, which is an impact crater, {link:state news agency Xinhua "http://english.cctv.com/2019/01/03/ARTIHC3ASInYbesRobBK8Bhv190103.shtml" target="_blank"} reported. It landed on the Von Karman crater in the South Pole-Aitken basin and then sent back a picture of the landing site shot by one of the monitor cameras on the probe’s lander, marking the world’s first image taken on the moon’s far side. The United States and the Soviet Union are the only other nations to make a "soft landing" on the moon but no other country has touched down on the side of the moon that always faces away from the Earth. “China's Chang'e-4 probe lands successfully on far side of the moon,” the CGTN wrote on Twitter, “marking the first ever soft-landing in this uncharted area.”

Chang’e 4 is the second lander and rover China has sent to the Moon, after the twin Chang’e 3 mission in 2013. 2019 China science look-ahead: from moon landing to an AI arms race, four things to expect in the year ahead

Chang’e 4 was launched atop a Long March 3B carrier rocket on December 8 from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in southwest China’s Sichuan province. “Since the far side of the moon is shielded from electromagnetic interference from the Earth, it’s an ideal place to research the space environment and solar bursts, and the probe can ‘listen’ to the deeper reaches of the cosmos,” Tongjie Liu, deputy director of the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center for the China National Space Administration, was quoted by CNN.
China National Space Administration's robotic lander Chang'e 4 successfully lands at the Von Kármán lunar crater on the far side of the Moon.