China's First Moon Rover 'Jade Rabbit' Launched Successfully [Video]

The Asian Space Race has come of age with China successfully launching its mission to moon, Monday. This follows India's Mars mission achieving another milestone on Sunday after the craft left earth's orbit to begin its 300-day journey to the Red Planet.

China's Sunday launch to moon is seen as the country's attempt at getting ahead in Asia's space race.

The Chinese Chang'e-3 lunar probe will take about two weeks to deliver a robotic probe to the moon's surface.

The moon probe Jade Rabbit is expected to land on the moon mid-December. This is China's first attempt at soft- landing a craft on a cosmic body.

The Long March-3B rocket that carried the probe, blasted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China at about 1:30 a.m (12:30 EST).

"The probe has already entered the designated orbit," said Zhang Zhenzhong, director of the launch center in Xichang, according to Xinhuanet.com. "I now announce the launch was successful. We will strive for our space dream as part of the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation."

The six-wheeled, solar-powered rover is called Yutu, or "Jade Rabbit." The Chang'e-3 mission is named after the goddess of the moon in Chinese mythology and the rover Yutu after its pet, AFP reported.

The rover will survey the lunar surface and look for natural resources. If successful, China Chang'e-3 will be the third lunar rover mission after the U.S and the erstwhile USSR.

China's moon mission puts the country among the few nations that have been able to send probes to explore deep space. In the future, China aims to put a man on the moon.

"This makes Chinese people get excited and forget their own bad situation," one poster wrote on Sina Weibo (a version of twitter used in the country), reported South China Morning Post.

"Every time they launch a rocket, it's very moving," said another. "Soon, Chinese people will be able to go to the moon."

China began its space program in 1992. Yang Liwei is the country's first astronaut to orbit onboard the spacecraft Shenzhou-5, Russia Today reported.

Unnamed U.S. scientists have said that China's lunar mission is unlikely to get any new data about moon. Designs of the Chinese rover are quite similar to NASA's Mars Exploration Rover, according to Washington Post.

India's mission to Mars on Sunday began its 422m miles, 300-day journey to the red planet.

By early Monday, the craft called Mangalyaan had crossed moon's orbit, Times of India reported. Currently, the orbiter is the farthest object sent into space by country.

The craft fired its main engine Sunday morning and slung past earth's orbit after obtaining enough velocity.

"The critical manoeuvre to place India's Mars Orbiter Spacecraft in the Mars Transfer Trajectory was successfully carried out in the early hours of today (Sunday, December 1, 2013)," the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said in a statement.