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China Declares Chang'e-4 Mission Complete Success
SOURCE: Xinhua     UPDATED: 2019-01-22

BEIJING, Jan. 11 (Xinhua) -- China announced Friday that the Chang'e-4 mission, which realized the first-ever soft-landing on the far side of the moon, was a complete success.

With the assistance of the relay satellite Queqiao (Magpie Bridge), the rover Yutu-2 (Jade Rabbit-2) and the lander of the Chang'e-4 probe took photos of each other.

The scientific instruments aboard the probe worked well, and the images taken by the probe and detection data have been sent back to ground control, said the China National Space Administration (CNSA).

At 4:47 p.m. Beijing Time on Friday, the images of the lander and rover appeared on a large screen at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center, showing the Chinese national flag on both the lander and the rover with the desolate landscape dotted with craters on the far side of the moon in the background.

One of the images published by CNSA earlier on Friday is a 360-degree panorama which was pieced together from 80 photos taken by a camera on the lander after the rover drove onto the lunar surface, according to Li Chunlai, deputy director of the National Astronomical Observatories of China and commander-in-chief of the ground application system of Chang'e-4.

Scientists have made an analysis of the terrain and landforms in the probe's landing area and planned a route for the future exploration of the rover according to the images taken by the probe.