It’s been ten years. Do you still remember the little rabbit that “broke into” the Moon Palace?

Commander: Shut down the engine and switch to uncontrolled mode...

Commentator: The lander should have landed on the lunar surface by now!

Host: It feels like the whole process was done in one go...

Commander: Great Wall report, the probe has landed safely. Attention everyone, I am from Beijing. According to Beijing's real-time telemetry monitoring, the Chang'e 3 probe has landed safely, and the lunar surface initialization will be carried out according to the normal plan...

As the engine shut down, Chang'e-3 fell by its own gravity. The landing legs "stood" firmly on the lunar surface - this scene happened ten years ago today. "Chang'e" landed gently on the "Guanghan Palace", and the 130th lunar exploration journey of mankind was perfectly staged in the gentle embrace of the Chinese probe and the moon .

With the successful landing of the Chinese-made "Yutu" in the Bay of Rainbows on the moon and the start of lunar surface patrol and exploration , China became the third country in the world to achieve a soft landing on the moon after the United States and the Soviet Union.

The "Yutu" lunar rover is the first lunar rover designed and manufactured by my country, and together with the lander, it forms the Chang'e 3 rover. It is responsible for carrying scientific payloads to investigate the lunar surface morphology and geological structure, lunar surface material composition and available resources.

Image source: Lunar Rover Yutu official Weibo

This area, which was later named "Guanghan Palace" by the International Astronomical Union, became a new starting point for China's lunar exploration.

"Guanghan Palace" is located at 44.12°N and 19.51°W. On January 4, 2016, the International Astronomical Union officially agreed to name the landing site of Chang'e 3 "Guanghan Palace", which became the official lunar place name recognized by the global scientific research community.

Image source: China National Astronomy official Weibo

Among them, "Guanghan Palace" is taken from the "palace where Chang'e and Jade Rabbit lived" in ancient Chinese mythology ; "Ziwei", "Tianshi" and "Taiwei" are three larger impact craters adjacent to the Chang'e 3 landing site. Their names are taken from the "Three Enclosures" in ancient astronomical maps to express respect for ancient Chinese astronomers.

As the second step of China's lunar exploration project of "orbiting, landing, and returning", while achieving a soft landing, Chang'e-3 is tasked with breaking through key technologies such as automatic patrol and exploration, deep space tracking and control communications, and survival on the lunar night.

The high-resolution, full-color photos of the lunar surface taken by Chang'e-3 and the Yutu lunar rover have amazed the world.

These are the clearest photos of the lunar surface taken by humans for the first time in more than 40 years. They show the real scene and details of the lunar surface. The tracks left by the Yutu lunar rover are clearly visible, and the details of the large and small rocks and craters on the lunar surface are fully displayed.

Image source: Xinhuanet

"One day in heaven is equal to one year on earth." Although one night on the moon is not as long as one year, it is equivalent to 14 days on earth. When the moon night comes, the air is chilly and the temperature can reach -180 degrees Celsius. During their work on the moon, Chang'e-3 and Yutu conducted scientific observations of the moon, the universe and the earth through eight scientific equipment, including panoramic cameras, topographic cameras, lunar radars, lunar optical telescopes, and extreme ultraviolet cameras, i.e., "measuring the moon, surveying the sky, and observing the earth," and obtained a large amount of valuable scientific data.

Yutu played an indispensable role in helping Chang'e 3 complete many "impossible tasks". For example, Yutu obtained the profile structure characteristics and geological evolution map of the shallow layer of the lunar crust at a depth of 330 meters in the landing area, which became the world's first lunar geological profile map. Scientists also used Yutu's detection data to reveal the volcanic evolution history of the lunar Mare Imbrium for the first time.

As China's first lunar rover, Yutu, which was expected to serve for only three months, worked 14 hours a day, endured the extreme cold of the moon night, and tenaciously recovered many times, persisting alone and tenaciously for 972 days until it said goodnight to everyone for the last time and fell asleep forever. This data set a record for the longest work on the moon. During this period, Yutu and Chang'e 3 recorded a total of 7TB of data, creating many important research results for human space exploration.

Ten years passed in a flash.

Do you still remember the rabbit that saw the most stars?

Comprehensive sources: Xinhuanet, National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, etc.