out in applause. jade rabbit's three month long mission consists of snapping pictures, analyzing rock samples, and mapping the lunar surface with radar. no other nation has visited the moon since 1976, begging the question, is there anything left to learn there? >> one of the big topics right now is what resources are available on the moon. can you perhaps mine it some day and bring things back to earth that would be of some value. and then you've always got the moon as a staging post, a place where humans can go, a relatively nearby steppingstone before going off into deep space to targets like mars. >> reporter: the rover is being remotely controlled with tracking stations around the world operated by the european space agency. this is the culmination of decades of chinese ambition to land on the moon. jeff, in addition to the rover he's research, the lunar lander is equipped with an ultraviolet telescope to study other celestial objects. >> jeff: don dahler, thank you very much. we learned today of the passing of peter o'toole who died last