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.
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