Lunar rovers

China's Chang'e-4 lunar rover landed on the far side of the moon Thursday, the first probe to do so, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

The probe landed at 10:26 am Beijing time (0226 GMT) and relayed a photo of the "dark side" of the moon to the Queqiao satellite, which will relay communications between controllers on Earth and the far side of the moon.

China is on track to launch its first Mars probe around 2020, and plans call for retrieving soil and rock samples from the red planet before 2030, said Zhang Rongqiao, the mission's chief designer, China Daily reports. 

China will launch a mission to land on the dark side of the moon in two years' time, state media reported, in what will be a first for humanity.

The moon's far hemisphere is never directly visible from Earth and while it has been photographed, with the first images appearing in 1959, it has never been explored.

NASA's Opportunity Mars rover has become the first human-made vehicle to complete a marathon on another planet -- a feat accomplished in a record time of no less than 11 years.
      

The US space agency's Opportunity rover has now clocked more miles on Mars than any man-made vehicle to reach another celestial body, NASA said Monday.
      
Since arriving on the Red Planet in 2004, the solar-powered robot has journeyed across 40 kilometers of Martian terrain.