Beijing has announced plans to land its first exploratory moon probe by late 2013.
While pundits speculate on whether the economy will have a hard or soft landing, Chinese scientists are planning another kind of landing all together – a Moon landing. Riding high on the recent astronautical success of Shenzhou 9, scientists will send the Chang'e 3 lunar explorer to survey the surface of the Moon sometime in late 2013.
The probe, named after a lunar goddess, will photograph images of the Moon's surface and is the first step towards China's goal of retrieving lunar soil and stone samples in 2017. The nation's ambitious space program also includes plans to build a fully-manned space station by 2020.
The announcement comes hot-on-the-heels of America's surface explorer, Curiosity, which has been feeding back images of Mars' surface for some weeks already. While China is still far behind the established space superpowers, Russian and the US, the Chang'e probe shows the nation's progression towards becoming a world leader in space exploration.