Like many other countries around the world, China hopes to explore the moon. It has already done so with several probes(探测器) and lunar rover(月球车). But it has even bigger plans to put a man on the moon in the near future.
Yang Liwei, China's first man in space, said that it will "not take long" for a manned mission (任务) to get official agreement and money support, according to the Xinhua News Agency (机构).
China's space programme is still young compared to those of the United States and Russia. But it has already made great achievements in exploring the moon. Its moon mission (使命) began with Chang'e 1, an unmanned orbital probe(无人轨道探测器) that was sent up in October, 2007. It collected data that was used to create a 3~D map of the moon's surface.
China achieved another achievement with the Chang'e 3 mission. For this mission, China's first lunar rover, Yutu, successfully landed on the moon. bed. For China's space programme, it was another great achievement that Chang'e 4, the second lunar rover successfully landed on the moon's far side, an area that has not yet been explored, in December, 2018.
China will follow Chang'e 4 with a series of other lunar mission. These missions will include taking lunar soil and rock samples, building "moon base, and hopefully landing a human on the moon's surface around 2030, according to Zhao Xiaojin, a senior official at the China Academy of Space Technology.
Last year, when Yang Liwei was asked if he had any plans to visit the moon himself, he replied, "If I am given the chance, no problem!" It is likely that many other Chinese share Yang's excitement about this new stage of China's space exploration efforts.
