CNN News:嫦娥三號攜玉兔月球車登月

It's on the Moon because that thing that's attached to in the picture is a lunar rover.

It's called the Jade Rabbit, it has six wheels, four cameras, two legs and as it digs around on the Moon, China's hoping it will help the country make more of a name for itself.

In space, and on earth.

China's Jade Rabbit, lunar rover is now exploring the Moon.

This vehicle detached itself from the larger Chang E-3 Lunar probe in the early hours of Sunday, Beijing time.

Now, the probe itself made an historic soft, unmanned landing on the Moon, Saturday night, Beijing time.

And it now puts China as the third country to accomplish this technological fit coming after the U.S. and Russia.

It landed on the Moon...

Chang E-3 is on the Moon.

And we saw scenes of scientists from China's Space Agency celebrating, embracing each other at the moment that that Lunar probe made its successful landing on the Moon.

Now, one of the missions of this Lunar probe, which is partially solar power.

It's the six-wheeled vehicle weighing about 150 kilograms,

one of its missions is to explore a part of the Moon known as the Sinus Iridium, or the Bay of Rainbows.

It' also tasked with looking beneath the surface of the Moon using ground penetrating radar.

In part, to search for possible valuable mineral deposits.

Now, some experts tell CNN that they think the Chinese may be looking at the possibility, a future prospecting and mining missions to the Moon.

The Chinese acknowledge that their space program is decades behind the U.S. and Russia, for example,

but this does seem to be a part of a much bigger strategy that also involves establishing China's own global positioning system of satellites around the Earth and also building its own manned space station.

And that's very significant.

Because if everything goes according to plan,

when the international space station is decommissioned in 2020, in the subsequent decade, it will be the Chinese that will have the only manned space station orbiting around the Earth.

Ivan Watson, CNN, Beijing.