Arriving a little late for the space-race aren’t we China? While NASA is looking at photos of Mars taken by their Curiosity rover, the China National Space Administration has been sending lunar probes into orbit around the moon… And they’ve announced they’re ready to land an unmanned probe on the surface.

China’s space program is still very young, but going strong and steady. They launched two lunar probes, the Chang’e-1 and Chang’e-2, into orbit around the moon in 2007 and 2010, and now the Chang’e-3 is in its final launch implementation stage, to be sent to land on the moon’s surface.

The Chinese government has been throwing money at their space program, which sent its first astronaut into orbit in 2003. In the pipe-line are plans to launch an Earth orbiting space station, and send a human to the moon by 2020.

Here’s a pic of China’s unmanned lunar probe, the Chang’e-3, followed Curiosity’s classic selfie taken from Mars for good measure.

[Source : The Verge]