Chang'e 4

Chang'e 4 (in Chinese: 嫦娥四号) is a Chinese lunar spacecraft launched on December 7, 2018. The spacecraft is a replica of the lunar probe Chang'e 3, launched in 2013. It is the 8th Chinese spacecraft launched to the Moon and the second to land there. Chang'e 4 consists of a lander and a rover. Both spacecraft carry several instruments including cameras, an infrared spectrometer to measure the composition of the soil near the rover and a radar detecting the surface structure of the subsoil as well as a radio spectrometer to analyze solar flares. The primary mission was scheduled to last 90 days. The space probe placed itself in lunar orbit on December 13. The lander landed on the dark side of the Moon on January 3, 2019, in the crater Von Kármán. This is the first landing of a spacecraft on this face of the Moon. A telecommunications satellite, called Queqiao, had previously been launched into the Lagrange L2 point of the Earth-Moon system to act as a relay, as the Moon is an obstacle to communications between Chang'e 4 and the Earth. Shortly after landing, the Yutu 2 rover was dropped.