China Space Program

The Tianhe module will lift off atop a Long March 5B rocket a few months from now, if all goes according to plan.

China's Yutu 2 rover just turned two years old, and NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has kept a sharp eye on its movements during its mission on the moon.

China's Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter and rover are speeding toward the Red Planet and preparing to arrive on Feb. 10, according to the China National Space Administration.

This year saw a new age of sample-retrieval missions, protests against a telescope, an incredible visit from a dazzling comet and the ''great conjunction'' of Saturn and Jupiter.

While 2020 was a difficult year around the world with the challenges that have come with the coronavirus pandemic, space continued to reach new heights.

China has recovered the lunar samples collected by the daring Chang'e 5 mission and now work is underway to get the materials to the laboratory for science — and for sharing.

China successfully launched the first Long March 8 rocket late Monday (Dec. 21), kicking off a line of boosters that will eventually be reusable.

The Chang'e 5 return capsule carrying lunar samples is headed for a Beijing laboratory for opening, with a research team eagerly awaiting their chance to start studying the fresh moon specimens.

China's Chang'e 5 moon sample-return capsule landed in Inner Mongolia on Wednesday (Dec. 16), returning lunar rocks for the first time since 1976.

China has successfully launched a pair of satellites into space to learn more about gravitational waves, or echoes in space-time from huge mergers or cosmic events.

China's Chang'e 5 lander touched down on the moon and collected the first lunar samples in nearly 50 years, but now the lights have gone out.

China's Chang'e 5 orbiter is heading home on the final leg of its mission to collect fresh lunar samples from the moon.

As Chang’e 5 continues to make headlines for its exploits on and around the moon, China continues to launch rockets back on Earth.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured an image of China's Chang'e 5 lander on the moon just hours after its historic landing.

It's a fabric first for China.

Two Chinese spacecraft have successfully carried out a docking in lunar orbit to bring home the first samples from the moon in over 40 years.

China has launched a small spacecraft from the surface of the moon in the critical next step in the ambitious Chang'e 5 mission to bring lunar samples to Earth.

China's Chang'e 5 lander has returned its first panorama from its landing site on the moon.