-- Giant steps in space

Three astronauts went into space aboard the Shenzhou-10 spacecraft on June 11 and returned to Earth on June 26.

During the 15-day mission, Shenzhou-10 docked twice with the orbiting space lab Tiangong-1; once without any intervention by the crew and once manually. The astronauts conducted medical experiments and delivered a lecture to students on Earth about basic physics.

On December 2, China's lunar probe Chang'e-3, with moon rover Yutu aboard, successfully landed on the moon, the first time that a Chinese spacecraft has soft-landed on an extraterrestrial body.

Screen shows the photo of the Yutu moon rover taken by the camera on the Chang'e-3 moon lander during the mutual-photograph process, at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center in Beijing, capital of China, Dec 15, 2013. The moon rover and the moon lander took photos of each other Sunday night, marking the complete success of the Chang'e-3 lunar probe mission.[Photo/Xinhua]

Video: From scrap and plastic to lunar module