Chang’e-3, which carried a robotic rover, was China’s first historic landing on the Moon.
When Chang’e-3 became the first Chinese craft to land on the moon 10 years ago, it kicked off nationwide celebrations—and a decade of major successes for a rapidly accelerating space program.
This monumental achievement led to China’s development of a crewed space station, deployment of a robotic rover to Mars, and being the first country to land on the far side of the moon.
President Xi Jinping has described building China into a space power as “our eternal dream”.
Here are five things to know about this space program:
A slow start
Chinese leader Mao Zedong declared his nation’s space ambitions soon after the Soviet Union launched the world’s first satellite, Sputnik 1, in 1957.
It took 13 years for China to launch its first satellite Dong Fang Hong, or “The East is Red”—named after the famous Communist revolutionary song it broadcast from orbit.
It was not until the late 1980s that the program began to pick up pace, alongside China’s ascent into the world’s richest and most powerful nations.
Overseen by the military, its secretive space program’s goals became more ambitious. In 1992, it formally began a project to send humans into space.
‘Taikonauts’
More than three decades after its first satellite launch, on October 15, 2003, Yang Liwei became the first Chinese to travel into space, and an instant national hero.
China’s Tiangong space station is regularly hosting astronauts.
With the success of his Shenzhou 5 mission, China became only the third nation after the United States and Russia to demonstrate the ability to launch humans into space.
In total, 20 Chinese astronauts have made the journey into space, including two women. State media have used the term “taikonaut” to describe China’s spacefarers.
Many of them have journeyed to Tiangong, China’s first long-term space station whose construction was completed last year.
Though much smaller than the International Space Station, it contains living quarters for a rotating crew, robotic arms and airlocks for conducting spacewalks.
To the moon
China has also sent exploration missions to the moon.
Named after the moon goddess in Chinese folklore, Chang’e-3 touched down on the surface in 2013, making China only the third nation to successfully land there.
China was the first nation to successfully land on the far side of the Moon.
Two other milestones followed. In 2019, China became the first nation to make a controlled landing on the far side of the moon with Chang’e-4.
A year later, Chang’e-5 brought the first lunar samples to Earth in more than 40 years.
Chinese space authorities have said they plan to land humans on the moon by 2030, as well as build a lunar base.
Mars and deep space
One of the most spectacular successes of the Chinese space program came in 2021 when its Tianwen-1 mission landed a rover named Zhurong on the surface of Mars.
