China to open Chang'e-4 lunar probe data to world

China will gradually open data collected by the Chang'e-4 lunar probe to the world, the country's lunar program chief designer said.

Wu Weiren, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, made the statement in his capacity as a member of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the country's top political advisory body, on the sidelines of its annual session, which opened on Sunday.

Photo taken by the lander of the Chang'e-4 probe on Jan. 11, 2019 shows the rover Yutu-2 (Jade Rabbit-2). [File photo: Xinhua/China National Space Administration]

The Chang'e-4 probe made the first-ever soft landing on the Von Karman Crater in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the moon on Jan. 3.

Wu said both the lander and the rover have been woken up from a "sleep mode" and are now collecting new data.

Wu added that China plans to launch the Chang'e-5 probe later this year to collect samples from the moon and bring them back to the earth and to launch a probe in 2020 to orbit, land and rove on Mars.