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China to send 'jade rabbit' buggy to the moon next month

BEIJING Tue Nov 26, 2013 12:59am EST

Visitors take pictures of a prototype model of a lunar rover at the 15th China International Industry Fair in Shanghai, November 5, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Stringer

(Reuters) - China will land its first probe on the moon in early December which will deploy a buggy to explore its surface, an official said on Tuesday, marking a major milestone in the country's space ambitions.

Chris Hadfield: We Should Treat Earth as Kindly as We Treat Spacecraft - Wired Science

By Chris Hadfield 11.25.13 6:30 AM

Astronaut Chris Hadfield was commander of Expedition 35 on the International Space Station, from December 2012 to May 2013.   Tavis Coburn

"Racing high over the Sahara at 5 miles per second, protected from the desert’s parched endlessness and soaking in its sere beauty, I saw Khartoum, the city where the White and Blue Nile rivers meet. I turned my head left and followed the river downstream to Cairo and the Mediterranean. Twisting weightlessly back to my right, I could pick out sunlight glinting off the waters of Lake Tana and Lake Victoria, the Nile’s headwaters. Explorers from the early Greeks to Queen Victoria’s David Livingstone had toiled and failed to find what I could see at a glance. Impressive on its own—even more so since I had been over Winnipeg, on the edge of the Canadian prairies, just 20 minutes earlier."