China’s space agency announced on Wednesday that their newest lunar probe has reached the launch site and is getting ready for a mission to the moon in the first half of this year.

State broadcaster CCTV posted photos on its website of the unit under wraps as it was unloaded from a large cargo airplane earlier this week and then transported by flatbed truck to the Wenchang launch site on southern China’s Hainan island.

The declaration was made one day following a decision by a U.S. corporation to cancel a scheduled lunar landing on February 23 due to a fuel leak that occurred shortly after launch on Monday.

Both China and the U.S. have ambitions to send astronauts to the moon, resulting in a rising competition in the realm of space exploration. The U.S. aims to achieve this by 2026, while China’s objective is to do so before 2030.

The Chinese National Space Administration announced that they will conduct pre-launch examinations on the Chang’e-6 spacecraft. The objective of the mission is to collect samples from the unexplored side of the moon.

A moon lander from a Houston-based company in the United States is scheduled to launch within the next month.

Four nations, including the U.S., Russia, China, and India, have successfully landed spacecraft on the moon. The United States is the only country to have sent astronauts to the moon before.

Source: wral.com