Ouyang Ziyuan served as the program's chief scientist when the China National Space Administration officially launched the initiative. He is a geologist and chemical cosmologist who established the scientific foundation for all subsequent missions.
Chang'e 1 lifted off on the 24th of October 2007 aboard a Long March 3A rocket after being delayed from its initial planned date between 17 and the 19th of April 2007. The probe generated a high definition three-dimensional map to provide a reference for future soft landings and mapped the abundance and distribution of various chemical elements on the lunar surface.
Chang'e 4 landed on the 3rd of January 2019 on the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the Moon with the Yutu-2 rover deployed from this lander. This event marked the first soft landing on the lunar far side while the lander operated in Von Karman crater.
Chang'e 5 returned 1731 grams of lunar soil samples back to Earth by the 16th of December 2020 after lifting off on the 23rd of November 2020. This was the first mission to return lunar samples since 1976 and involved scientists from Australia, Russia, France, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Sweden participating in research involving these samples.
Zhang Hailian introduced plans at the 9th China International Commercial Aerospace Forum in Wuhan on the 12th of July 2023 to land astronauts on the Moon by 2030. The Mengzhou crewed spacecraft and Lanyue crewed lunar lander were selected for this human landing mission using two launches with the Long March 10 rocket.