Chang'e 4 achieved the first soft landing on the Moon’s far side on 3 January 2019.
China’s mission consisted of a lander and the Yutu-2 rover. They landed in Von Kármán crater within the Moon’s South Pole–Aitken basin, one of the largest and oldest impact features in the Solar System. The mission carried cameras, spectrometers, and instruments for studying the lunar surface and subsurface.
Because the far side cannot directly communicate with Earth, China placed the Queqiao relay satellite near the Earth–Moon L2 point before the landing. That relay enabled commands and scientific data to pass between mission control and the spacecraft.
The far side is often called the “dark side,” but that description is inaccurate: it receives sunlight just like the near side. “Far side” refers to the side that normally faces away from Earth.