Unveiling the image at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC), Premier Wen Jiabao hailed it as a major step in “the Chinese race’s 1,000-year-old dream” of exploring the moon.
The framed black-and-white photo showed a rough moon surface with scattered round craters both big and small.
The area covered by the picture, about 460 km in length and 280 km in width, was located within 54 to 70 degrees south latitude and 57 to 83 degrees east longitude.
The area pictured was part of the moon’s highlands and was mainly composed of plagioclase, a common rock-forming element. On the surface were craters of different sizes, shapes, structures and ages.
“The dark patch in the picture’s upper right side shows the surface blanketed by basalt, a hard and dense volcanic rock,” a BACC source said.
The picture was pieced together by 19 images, each covering a width of 60 kilometers of the moon’s surface.
The far right of the picture was the first area to be captured by the CCD camera aboard Chang’e I.
All the image data was collected Nov. 20 and 21 and processed into a three-dimensional picture in several days after being transmitted back to the earth.
Wen asserted in a passionate and inspiring speech that China had joined the select group of world powers with the capability to engage in deep-space exploration.
He said that lunar probe was the third milestone in China’s space exploration following the successes of manmade satellites and manned spaceflights.
The success has “blazed a new trail and accumulated valuable experience” for China to improve its overall capability in science and technology, he said.
During the celebration work staff at a hall in the BACC played greetings and music decoded from the data transmitted back to the earth via the satellite.
“I come with greetings from China,” said a female voice that was programmed into the Chang’e I probe to salute the moon.
The music broadcast included “The East is Red,” which was also played in 1970 by the country’s first manmade satellite, “Ode to the Motherland,” a tribute to the country’s power and prosperity, and some moon-themed songs, such as Chinese pop diva Faye Wong’s rendition of a famous Song Dynasty (960-1127) poem.
Also on the day, a total of 22 researchers and eight departments were awarded yesterday for their outstanding contributions to the lunar probe project, which began in 2004 and cost 1.4 billion yuan (US$187 million). About 10,000 people from 200 departments have participated in the program.
China hopes the probe, launched late last month, will have surveyed the entire surface of the moon at least once by early next year.
In another development, China currently had no plans to send a man to the moon, Sun Laiyan, chief of the China National Space Administration, said yesterday.
“I’ve read reports by foreign media saying that China would undertake a manned moon landing in 2020, but I don’t think there has been such a plan,” Sun told a press conference in Beijing.
Chang’e I, named after a mythical Chinese goddess who, according to legend, flew to the moon, blasted off on a Long March 3A carrier rocket Oct. 24 shortly after Japan launched its first lunar probe, Kaguya, in mid-September.
The launch of the orbiter narks the first step in China’s three-stage moon mission, which will lead to a moon landing and launch of a moon rover at around 2012. In the third phase, another rover will land on the moon and return to earth with lunar soil and stone samples for scientific research at around 2017.
With India and South Korea planning to conduct their own lunar probes, concerns have arisen about a space race in Asia.
China conducted its maiden piloted spaceflight in October 2003, making it the third country in the world after the former Soviet Union and the United States to have sent men into space. In October 2005, China completed its second manned spaceflight, with two astronauts aboard the Shenzhou VI spacecraft.
(Xinhua)
