Launch of Chang'e 4

Chang'e 4 was a Chinese lunar lander and rover that made the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon, in the Von Kármán crater within the South Pole–Aitken basin. Because the far side has no direct line of sight to Earth, communication was relayed through a satellite named Queqiao placed beyond the Moon at the second Earth–Moon Lagrange point. The rover, Yutu-2, explored the surface and examined rocks, and the lander carried a small biological experiment in which a cotton seed sprouted, the first plant to grow on the Moon. Measurements suggested that some material came from the lunar mantle. Yutu-2 became the longest-lived rover on the Moon, surpassing the Soviet Lunokhod 1.

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