Chinese craft to land on the moon by end of 2013

State media said China plans to land its first probe on the moon by the end of the year, Reuters reported. “The mission will see a Chinese orbiter soft-land, or land on the moon after using a technique to slow its speed, on a celestial body for the first time,” Xinhua News Agency said. China launched its first moon orbiter, the Chang’e One, in 2007. That marked the first step in China’s three-stage moon mission, to be followed by an unmanned moon mission and then the retrieval of lunar soil and stone samples around 2017. Chinese scientists have talked of sending a man to the moon after 2020.