Chang'e 3

Mission Profile

Chang'e 3 was China's first spacecraft to perform a soft landing on the Moon since the Soviet Luna 24 mission in 1976, launching on 1 December 2013 aboard a Long March 3B and landing in Mare Imbrium on 14 December 2013 with the Yutu (Jade Rabbit) rover. The mission demonstrated China's mastery of the full suite of lunar soft landing technologies and was the first mission since Apollo to deploy a rover on the Moon. While Yutu experienced a mechanical failure early in its operations, it continued to make scientific observations from its stationary position for over 31 months, setting the record for the longest surface operations by a rover on the Moon at the time. Chang'e 3's cameras also captured the first images of Earth taken from the lunar surface in human-perceptible color.