It was night in China when a rover and a lander were launched on a Long March 3B rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center starting the Chang’e 4 mission. After about half an hour, lander and rover, after successfully separating from the rocket’s third stage entered the orbit where they’ll start the series of maneuvers that will bring them en route to the Moon.

The Chinese Moon missions are called Chang’e, like the Chinese Moon goddess. Unlike the Chang’e 3 mission, which began on December 1, 2013, the Chang’e 4 aims to bring a lander and a rover on the far side of the Moon and precisely near the crater Von Kármán, in Aitken basin, a crater that’s over 2,500 kilometers wide created by the impact of a large meteorite.

The destination so different from the Chang’e 3 mission will also require a longer journey, almost twice as it will take almost a month for the new lander and rover for their moon landing. The aim is to carry out a geological study to better understand the history of an area of ​​the Moon that is still little known and the differences between the two faces of the Moon.

Direct communications with the Earth are impossible from the far side of the Moon. For this reason, on May 20, 2018 the Queqiao satellite was launched, which will serve as a radio relay. It was necessary to launch it well in advance because it had to reach the Lagrangian point called L2, a journey that lasted almost a month, and be tested to make sure it works properly.

Together with the Queqiao satellite, the two Longjiang-1 and Longjiang-2 microsatellites were launched to observe the sky from the Moon’s orbit. However, Longjiang-1 failed to enter orbit while Longjiang-2 did it and regularly began its mission.

The lander also contains a biological experiment consisting of potato seeds and thale cress, also known as mouse-ear cress or arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) along with silkworms in a small greenhouse. The aim is to assess whether these organisms can form a biologically stable symbiosis in which they can survive using the oxygen and carbon dioxide they need.

The Chang’e 4 mission is part of the Chinese space program, which continues its progress with missions that use space probes and others with astronauts. Moon missions are becoming more and more complex and within a year another one could start that involves taking samples to bring them back to Earth. The ultimate aim is to send astronauts, or taikonauts as the Chinese call them, to the Moon.