The development of China's space program was first suggested in 1956 by the father of Chinese rocket science, Qian Xuesen (1911-2009). As a result of extensive preparation and planning, the Shenzhou crewed program began in 1992, and the first Chinese astronaut, Yang Liwei, went into space in 2003. Chang'e-1, a lunar orbiter was launched in 2007, while Tiangong-1, an experimental crewed space station was launched in 2011.
In 2019, Chang'e-4 made a soft landing on the far side of the moon. It was mankind's first successful soft landing on the far side of the moon. A "soft" landing is one where the spacecraft lands in a controlled way, and gets no damage. Twelve hours later, the small Yutu-2 rover12 was released. To understand why Chang'e-4's soft landing was such an achievement, consider the difficulty of any space mission, especially one to the far side of the moon. While the far side of the moon is often called the dark side of the moon, it is not really dark.
The main problem with landing on the far side of the moon is communication. There is no clear line of sight between the far side of the moon and the Earth. This normally makes radio communication with spacecraft on the far side of the moon impossible. Chinese engineers came up with a unique solution. Before Chang'e-4's mission (任务), they sent the Queqiao communications satellite into space. When engineers needed to communicate with Chang'e-4 and Yutu-2, they could send radio messages to Queqiao. The messages would then be sent from the satellite down to the Lander and rover. This allowed for contact between Earth and the far side of the moon.
One of the experiments of Chang'e-4's mission was designed to test a closed ecological (生态的) system that could be extremely important for long-term space missions: The plants produce food and oxygen for the fruit flies, while the fruit flies produce carbon dioxide for the plants. This experiment worked for nine days, but it had to be stopped when the temperatures dropped below -52℃.
