When Chang'e-3 became the first Chinese craft to land on the moon 10 years ago, it kicked off nationwide celebrations—and a decade of major successes for a rapidly accelerating space program.

Since the December 14, 2013 landing, China has built a crewed space station, sent a robotic rover to Mars and become the first nation to make a controlled landing on the far side of the moon.

President Xi Jinping has described building China into a space power as "our eternal dream".

Here are five things to know about this space program:

A slow start

Chinese leader Mao Zedong declared his nation's space ambitions soon after the Soviet Union launched the world's first satellite, Sputnik 1, in 1957.

It took 13 years for China to launch its first satellite Dong Fang Hong, or "The East is Red"—named after the famous Communist revolutionary song it broadcast from orbit.