China launches rover for first far side of the moon landing

China launched a rover early Saturday morning destined to land on the far side of the moon, a global first that would boost Beijing's ambitions to become a space superpower.

The Chang'e-4 lunar probe mission -- named after the moon goddess in Chinese mythology -- launched on a Long March 3B rocket from the southwestern Xichang launch centre in the pre-dawn hours, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

The successful launch marked the start of a long journey to the far side of the moon for the Chang'e-4 mission, which is expected to land around the New Year to carry out experiments and explore the untrodden terrain.

Unlike the near side of the moon that is "tidally locked" and always faces the earth, and offers many flat areas to touch down on, the far side is mountainous and rugged.

It was not until 1959 that the Soviet Union captured the first images of the heavily cratered surface, uncloaking some of the mystery of the moon's "dark side".

No lander or rover has ever touched the surface there, positioning China as the first nation to explore the terrain.

"China over the past 10 or 20 years has been systematically ticking off the various firsts that America and the Soviet Union did in the 1960s and 1970s in space exploration," said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

"This is one of the first times they've done something that no one else has done before."