When the United States sent 12 astronauts to the moon and successfully conducted a series of scientific research, other countries around the world were also constantly exploring ways to conduct lunar exploration. With the continuous improvement of China's comprehensive national strength and scientific level, China also began the "Chang'e Project" lunar exploration program in September 2003. In view of China's characteristics, the "Chang'e Project" will achieve four scientific goals: "obtaining three-dimensional images of the lunar surface, analyzing the distribution characteristics of useful elements and types of substances on the lunar surface, exploring the characteristics of lunar soil, and exploring the Earth-Moon space environment". To achieve these four goals, the Chang'e Project will be carried out in three steps: "orbit, landing, and return". "Orbit" refers to launching a lunar probe from Earth and making it orbit the moon, so that it can conduct global exploration of the lunar surface. "Landing" refers to launching a lunar probe and making a soft landing on the lunar surface, releasing a lunar rover to conduct local exploration activities on the lunar surface. "Return" refers to the lunar probe landing on the lunar surface and completing sample collection, then taking off from the moon and bringing back the samples safely to Earth, so that the lunar samples can be analyzed in detail in Earth's laboratories.
On October 24, 2007, 18:05:04, China's first lunar probe, "Chang'e No.1", was successfully launched. On November 5, 11:37, after its first lunar orbit adjustment, "Chang'e No.1" entered the lunar orbit. On November 26, China released the first lunar image taken by the "Chang'e No.1" satellite. The image had an accuracy of 120 meters, and the shooting location was located on the lunar surface from 83°E to 57°E and from 70°S to 54°S, covering a lunar surface of about 280 kilometers wide and 460 kilometers long. In the following more than a year, the scientific instruments on board the "Chang'e No.1" satellite conducted multi-faceted scientific exploration of the moon and obtained a large amount of valuable scientific data. On March 1, 2009, 16:13:10, under the control of the ground control center, the "Chang'e No.1" satellite accurately impacted the lunar surface and successfully completed China's first lunar exploration mission.
On October 1, 2010, 18:59:57, China's second lunar probe, "Chang'e No.2", was successfully launched. As a backup satellite of "Chang'e No.1", the launch of "Chang'e No.2" was different from that of "Chang'e No.1". After its launch, "Chang'e No.2" directly entered the Earth-Moon transfer orbit, and on November 6 at 11:38, it entered the lunar orbit. Due to the update of the detection equipment and the reduction of the orbital height of "Chang'e No.2", the detection accuracy has been further improved. After completing all the set detection tasks, on June 9, 2011, the "Chang'e No.2" exploration satellite left the moon and flew towards the gravitational balance point between Earth and the moon, known as L2, at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, and arrived at L2 at 23:24 on August 25 to conduct further deep space exploration and accumulate research data for China's future exploration of more distant celestial bodies.