The rocket launch was broadcast live on Chinese television, although viewership was reduced by the early-morning timing.
“The timing is dictated more by physics than by propaganda,” said Morris Jones, an Australian space analyst. He said that while the launch itself was relatively uncomplicated, as is the task of getting into orbit around the moon – something China has already done twice – the landing could be more difficult.
“Landing on the moon is far trickier than simply going into orbit. There is no margin for error,” he said.
China’s state news service described the mission as the “most complicated and difficult task in China’s space exploration.”
“More than 80% of the technologies adopted in the mission are new,” Wu Zhijian, spokesman with State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, told the news service last week.
Only the United States and the Soviet Union have successfully landed on the moon in the past. The U.S. is the only nation to land people on the moon.
Moon exploration enthusiasts are eagerly waiting to learn what the Chinese mission will uncover.
Since the burst of moon exploration in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly the 1969 landing by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the moon’s appeal has waned in favor of the planets and asteroids. In 2010, President Obama axed plans for the Constellation program that was supposed to return Americans to the moon by 2020.
“People wanted to explore the planets. We wanted to see more distant worlds,” said Jones. “But even though there was so much exploration of the moon in the 1960s and the 1970s, in recent years, we have found out things about the moon we never suspected when astronauts went there. We have found areas where there is water ice and regions colder than Pluto. There are still many surprises.”