New | Moon landing ‘100pc made in China’, says Xi Jinping
President Xi Jinping said China should be proud of its moon landing last month, stressing it was a national accomplishment.
“The Chang-e 3 mission was one of China’s most complex and difficult missions in aerospace,” Xi told staffers of the space programme at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Monday morning to congratulate them on the mission.
“It was a real and genuine Chinese product,” he said, according to the Xinhua news agency. “The most fundamental point is that China’s space industry insists on self-reliant and independent innovation.”
Moon rover Jade Rabbit rolled onto the moon from the Chang’e-3 landing spacecraft on December 14 in what has become milestone success in China’s intentions to send humans to the moon by 2020. It was the first moon landing since a Soviet mission in 1976.
