Two years ago, in December 2011, China published a blueprint outlining its ambitions in outer space. The launch, on December 2nd, of Chang'e-3-a lunar mission named after a Moon goddess-shows that it remains on track. Things could still go wrong. In matters of space flight, landing is at least as perilous as taking off-and more so when that landing is on another body, rather than back on Earth. This will be China's first attempt at such a landing. If it succeeds it will make the China National Space Administration (cnsa) only the second, after Russia's, to put an unmanned rover on the Moon. It may also help pave the way for the agency to match nasa's greater technical success of landing people there.
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