Mankind will soon be able to discover the far side of the moon as a Chinese lunar embarks on its journey toward the silver sphere early Saturday.

The Chang’e 4 robotic probe, the first artifact to touch down on the moon’s far side, was lifted atop a Long March 3B carrier rocket at 2:23 am Beijing time at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwestern China’s Sichuan province, according to a statement from the China National Space Administration.

During its multi-week flight toward the moon, the probe will enter a lunar transfer trajectory and then orbit the moon before making an autonomous soft-landing on the Aitken Basin of the south lunar pole, the statement said.

Tidal forces on Earth slow the moon’s rotation to the point where the same side always faces Earth. The other side, most of which is never visible from Earth, is the far side of the moon. However, it is not a “dark side” of the moon because the far side is as illuminated by the sun as the “near side” facing us.

Though the far side has been extensively photographed by spacecraft, starting with a Soviet probe in 1959, no probe had ever made a soft-landing on it so scientists around the world have yet to be able to conduct close observations and surveys of it.

The program’s scientific tasks are to perform low-frequency astronomical observations, to investigate landscapes, mineral compositions and geological structures of the landing site, and to conduct lunar environmental research on elements such as neutron radiation and neutral atoms, the administration explained.

The Chang’e 4 mission will enable scientists to discover what they haven’t known about the moon. They also can take advantage of the far side’s shield against Earth’s interference to make clearer observations into deep space, scientists involved in the program noted.

Chang’e 4’s rover has six wheels, two solar panels, a radar dish as well as multiple cameras, show pictures published by the China National Space Administration.

Liu Jizhong, director of China National Space Administration’s Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center, said that Chang’e 4 has been engineered to fit the complex landscape and sophisticated communication conditions on the far side of the moon.

In addition to Chinese scientific equipment, the Chang’e 4 mission also involves scientific apparatus developed by the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and Saudi Arabia.

In May, China launched a relay satellite tasked with transmitting signals between Chang’e 4 and ground control.

China started sending robotic probes to the moon in 2007 and has carried out several lunar missions since then. It landed the Chang’e 3 probe, which carried the first Chinese lunar rover, on the moon in December 2013. The Chang’e 3 mission marked first soft-landing by a spacecraft on the moon in nearly four decades.

The next step in China’s lunar exploration agenda, the Chang’e 5 mission, is scheduled for 2019 and will put a rover on the lunar surface to take samples and then bring them back to Earth.