Chinese probe Chang’e 4 successfully touched down on the far side of the Moon earlier today, thus becoming the first man-made spacecraft to do so.
Previous missions from NASA and other agencies have surveyed the far side of Earth’s satellite but never landed there.
Earth’s gravitational pull has greatly slowed down the Moon’s rotation over time, to the point where the same side of the satellite always faces our planet. The other face is deemed ‘the far side.”
The Chinese probe gets its name from a mythological figure that has lived on the Moon for thousands of years, according to the legend.