Giant leap for China as moon probe lands safely in Bay of Rainbows

China successfully carried out the world's first soft landing of a space probe on the moon in nearly four decades, the country's state media announced on Saturday.

The touchdown of the unmanned Chang'e 3 lander is the latest mission in the country's ambitious space programme, which is intended to put a Chinese astronaut on the moon early next decade, The Guardian reports. 

The lander – named after a Chinese goddess of the moon – carried a six-wheeled moon-rover called Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, to its landing spot on a flat plain known as the Sinus Iridum, or Bay of Rainbows, after hovering over the surface for several minutes before selecting the best available landing spot.

The rover separated from the lander part of the probe eight hours after Saturday's touchdown to embark on a three-month scientific exploration of the moon that will include digging into the lunar soil and carrying out geological surveys.

The success of the mission – which began when the Chang'e probe was blasted into space on 2 December on a Long March-3B carrier rocket – makes China the third nation to carry out a lunar soft landing after the United States and the former Soviet Union. The last landing was achieved by the Russians in 1976.

The Bay of Rainbows was selected for the craft's landing because it has yet to be studied by lunar probes. The spaceship's rover will be remotely controlled by Chinese control centres with support from a network of tracking and transmission stations around the world operated by the European Space Agency.

"It's still a significant technological challenge to land on another world," said Peter Bond, consultant editor for Jane's Space Systems and Industry. "Especially somewhere like the Moon, which doesn't have an atmosphere so you can't use parachutes or anything like that. You have to use rocket motors for the descent and you have to make sure you go down at the right angle and the right rate of descent and you don't end up in a crater on top of a large rock."