Recently, China has sent a rover to take pictures of the dark side of the moon, a first for space travel.

The rover, name Jade Rabbit, landed on the moon after a month long trip from Earth. While China kept the plan under wraps until they were ready to launch. According to the leaders of the Chinese Space Program, the plan has been in the works since 2016. The initial launch was on December 7, and it landed on January 3. The rover will take pictures of Von Karman crater on the south pole on the moon, and has six live species from Earth on board. China says the goal for that is to plant the seeds on the moon and be the first country to grow a flower on the moon.

“I think China landing on a different side of the moon is cool. You don’t see stuff like that very often. I hope that the pictures they get are really interesting,” sophomore Aiden Alderson said.
China would not be the first country to land on the dark side of the moon, however. The Soviets were actually the first in 1959.

However, it has not been done since, though there have been attempts. So China landing on the moon for the first time in 60 years is a very rare occurrence. The dark side is much colder than the light side, due to the obvious fact that the sun does not hit it, so it makes it much harder to explore.

“This might pave the way for more countries to do new things like this, and take the moon exploration to a whole new level,” junior Adam Thomason said.

So far, the rover has taken pictures of what the original plan was, the craters. The rover however, did stall for a few days, but as of late, has picked back up on its mission and continued taking pictures of craters on the dark side of the moon. There is no word however if China still plans on attempting to grow the seeds that were sent to the moon with the rover, or if they have ditched the idrea.