China is on its way to the first controlled lunar landing in almost four decades—a planned touchdown in the poetically named Bay of Rainbows (Sinus Iridium) to unleash a robotic rover called Yutu (see illustration), an equally poetic reference to the jade rabbit the goddess Chang'e took with her when she flew to the Moon. China's Chang'e-3 mission made it out of low Earth orbit Dec. 1 into a translunar trajectory that sets up Yutu for a landing on Dec. 14. Even if the mission does not work out as planned—the Moon's surface is littered wreckage from failed robotic landings—attempting it underscores China's ambitions in space, which have drawn praise from other spacefaring nations. Russian federal space agency Roscosmos posted news of the "flawless" launch on its English-language Facebook page, and the European Space Agency's (ESA) website noted that its ground-based space-tracking network is helping the Chinese, who normally rely on ocean-going tracking vessels for global coverage.
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