Mexico announced it will be launching its first mission to the moon in 2018. 

La Vanguardia reported the Mexican space mission will take place through the probe Lunar Lander Griffin Astrobotic property, an official partner company of NASA and financed in close collaboration with the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT). Mexico will be the first Latin American country to send a space probe to the moon. 

The Mexican Space Agency also plans to put in a lander on the moon as well. The lander will carry an instrument package that will be selected from many different submissions by the Mexican scientific technology community. 

"These will be analyzed by a committee of peers to determine the most viable type of instrument, which will be operated by Mexican scientists, and will allow the development of [humans] to work in the area of space in our country," CONACYT said in a statement. 

Mexico is hoping that other Latin countries will follow its footsteps and go to the moon. The last country to go to the moon was China earlier this year.

"Mexico and other Latin American countries want to participate more and more in the great missions of humankind in the space age, even in a modest, even in a gradual way, that will provide us with knowledge and technology that will be used for other Mexican and Latin American needs," AEM General Director Francisco Javier Mendieta Jimenez said in a statement made to Discovery.

Only three countries in the world have made it to the moon -- United States, Russia and China. Astrobotic Technology Inc. CEO John Thornton explained that his company's mission is to make it possible for other countries to go to the moon. 

The agency will also be working with Italy to create "high-level science and technology" investigations related to space.