By Xinhua
Beijing : China’s first lunar probe, Chang’e-1, completed its nearly two-million-km journey to the moon successfully Wednesday and entered its working orbit.
The probe, following instructions of the Beijing Aerospace Control Centre (BACC), started its third braking at 8.24 a.m. and entered a 127-minute round polar circular orbit at 8.34 a.m.
“It marks success of the probe’s long flight to the moon,” said Luan Enjie, chief commander of China’s lunar probe project.
TV footages showed work staff in the ground control centre hailing the success with coloured newsletters featuring a black headline “Circling the Moon, We Made It!” on the front page.
The grey-haired Luan and silver-haired Sun Jiadong, chief designer of the project, wearing smiles and holding hands together tightly.
“The satellite entered the designed working orbit just in time and very accurately today (Wednesday),” said Sun, who has joined hands with Luan for more than a decade to develop, test and carry out the country’s ambitious lunar probe project.
Ye Peijian, chief commander and designer in charge of the satellite system, considered it “a landmark moment”. “It proves that we have the ability to send our satellite to circle around the moon.”
China sent its first satellite into the Earth orbit in 1970, and has recorded more breakthroughs in its space programme in recent years.
The country carried out its maiden piloted space flight in Oct 2003, making it the third country after the former Soviet Union and the US to have sent men into space. In Oct 2005, China completed its second manned space flight, with two astronauts on board.
“Chang’e-1 has presented an extraordinary achievement, since it’s the first time that Chinese scientists manage to manoeuvre a satellite 390,000 km away from the earth,” said Wang Yejun, chief engineer of the BACC.
“The probe will travel along the current orbit at a stable altitude of 200 km above the moon’s surface. In each circle, it will always pass the two polars,” Wang said.
The satellite will position its solar panel towards the sun for power generating and the directional antenna towards the earth to allow data to be transmitted back to the earth.
Chang’e-1 will relay the first black-and-white picture of the moon after the instruments are positioned to the moon.
The probe is also expected to transmit back data of 32 pieces of music, which can be played by the radio stations or downloaded from the Internet after being decoded, Li Jian said.
The music include the national anthem, “The East is Red”, a tribute to Mao Zedong, which was broadcast in 1970 from the country’s first man-made earth satellite, and some moon-themed songs, such as Chinese pop diva Faye Wong’s rendition of a famous Song Dynasty poem.
In the past 49 years, the US, Soviet Union, Europe and Japan have launched 123 moon missions, among which six manned missions successfully sent 12 people to land on the moon.