China will soon launch its first unmanned lunar probe, the Jade Rabbit.

China will soon launch its first unmanned lunar probe, the Jade Rabbit.

The exploration craft was named after a rabbit that lives on the moon in Chinese folklore.

This mission comes over 10 years after the country independently sent astronauts to space, making them the third nation in history to do so on their own.

Jade Rabbit will be launched from the Sichuan province in southwestern China and likely land on an area of the moon called the Bay of Rainbows.

Once there, it will spend 3 months investigating the lunar surface.

The rover is outfitted with mechanical legs for collecting samples and cameras to capture surface images.

An official launch date hasn’t been set, but an early December window has been mentioned.

This will be China’s soft moon landing premier, and the first the world has seen since the former Soviet Union sent out the Luna 24 probe in 1976.

The mission is the second in a two-part lunar exploration initiative.

In 2010 an unmanned Chinese craft orbited the moon. It collected crater data and scouted possible landing sites for the Jade Rabbit.