BEIJING — Hours after a space probe from China made humanity’s first landing on the far side of the moon, sending images of its surroundings back to Earth, the spacecraft deployed a rover on Thursday to take still more photographs and scan the surface of terrain never before traversed. The rover is now programmed to roam across a barren vista toward a distinct crater. Chinese scientists hailed the landing of the Chang’e-4 probe as evidence of the country’s growing stature in space exploration. “It is human nature to explore the unknown world,” Wu Weiren, chief designer of the lunar mission for the China National Space Administration, said in an interview on the state television network, CCTV. “And it is what our generation and the next generation are supposed to do.”

Source: New York Times January 03, 2019 14:41 UTC