China launches first lunar probe

The Long March 3A rocket carrying the probe left a trail of smoke as it soared upward after its 6:05 p.m. (1005 GMT) launch from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the southwestern province of Sichuan.

Twenty-four minutes later, the Chang’e 1 satellite _ named after a mythical Chinese goddess who flew to the moon _ separated from the carrier rocket on a trajectory to reach lunar orbit in 13 days.

“The launch of China’s first moon probe satellite is successful!” Xu Fuxiang, a professor from the China Institute of Space Technology, said on state television, which broadcast the launch live.

“We have passed through the most difficult time,” he said after the rocket and satellite separated. “It should be heading smoothly toward the moon.”

The lunar mission adds depth to a Chinese space program that has sent astronauts orbiting around the earth twice in the past four years and is a source of great national pride.

President Hu Jintao and other Chinese leaders sent their congratulations to the Xichang facility, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Though boosted national pride is one benefit of the space program, China is also looking for scientific and military payoffs.

Wednesday’s launch marks the first step of a three stage moon mission. In about 2012 there will be a moon landing with a moon rover.

In the third phase about five years later, another rover will land on the moon and be returned to earth with lunar soil and stone samples.

“It’s a very significant launch,” said Charles Vick, a space analyst for the Washington think tank GlobalSecurity.org. “It certainly demonstrates that China is pushing its sciences and technology ... at the same time demonstrating its national space program to its own people.”

The move comes just weeks after China’s regional rival Japan put a probe into orbit around the moon in a big leap forward for Asia’s undeclared space race. India is likely to join the regional rivalry soon, with plans to send its own lunar probe into space in April.

“In Asia, there are a lot of countries looking for who will be the next regional leader,” said Joan Johnson-Freese, chair of the national security decision making department of the Naval War College in Rhode Island. “Showing you have technical capability certainly lends the idea that you are the leading country in the region.”

“For the Chinese, there’s also a great deal of domestic credibility,” she said. “It lends at lot of credibility to the communist party.”

Earlier this month, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said in unusually candid remarks that he thought China will get to the moon before the United States can meet a 2020 deadline for a return visit.

Soon after the satellite launch, Xinhua quoted an unidentified spokesman of the military-run space program as saying China was not interested in a space race and that the probe’s mission was “without any military aims and carrying no military facilities and equipment.”

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