Chang'e 2

China launched Chang'e 2 on 1 October 2010 as the second mission of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program. It mapped the Moon from a lower, roughly 100-kilometer orbit at much higher resolution than Chang'e 1, including detailed imaging of Sinus Iridum, the Bay of Rainbows, as a candidate landing site for Chang'e 3.

It traveled to the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point, becoming the first Chinese spacecraft to reach a Lagrange point, arriving in 2011. It then flew past the asteroid 4179 Toutatis in December 2012, China's first asteroid flyby.

Chang'e 1, launched in 2007, surveyed the Moon from a higher orbit at coarser resolution, while Chang'e 2 was built to fly lower and image more sharply, reportedly as fine as about 1.5 meters per pixel over the candidate landing area. Chang'e 2 essentially served as the reconnaissance scout for the Chang'e 3 lander mission that followed.

After the Toutatis flyby the spacecraft continued into deep space, and Chinese officials maintained contact while it reached distances on the order of 100 million kilometers from Earth by the mid-2010s. It was a deliberate test of China's deep-space tracking capability before later lunar and interplanetary missions.