[11] This success made China's CNSA the fourth space agency to directly explore asteroids, after NASA, ESA and JAXA.

As of 2014, Chang'e 2 has travelled over 100 million km from Earth,[12] conducting a long-term mission to verify China's deep-space tracking and control systems.

[15][16][17] The program aims to facilitate a crewed lunar landing in the 2030s and possibly build an outpost near the south pole.

According to Qian Huang of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory and Yong-Chun Zheng of the NAOC, the spacecraft also had a shorter Earth-to-Moon cruise time of 5 days, rather than 12.

[20] Furthermore, its laser altimeter's footprint was smaller than Chang'e 1's, achieving 5-meter vertical accuracy in its estimate of the Moon's radius.

Zheng remarked that "the mission goals of Chang'e 2 were focused into the high resolution image for the future landing site of CE-3 lunar lander and rover.

[3] The launch of the probe coincided with China's National Day on 1 October, in a symbolic celebration of the country's 61st communist anniversary.

[26] On 8 November 2010, the Chinese government announced the success of all of Chang'e 2's mission objectives,[27] and published lunar surface images with a resolution of up to 1.3 metres (4.3 ft).

[30] On 8 June 2011, Chang'e 2 completed its extended mission, and left lunar orbit for the Earth–Sun L2 Lagrangian point, to test the Chinese tracking and control network.

[7][8][9][32] According to Ouyang Ziyuan's report to the 16th Conference of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chang'e 2 departed from L2 on 15 April 2012, and began a mission to the asteroid 4179 Toutatis.