China has released the first image from its first lunar satellite to great fanfare.
Premier Wen Jiabao, visiting the scientists who have guided the lunar probe Chang鈥檈 1 around the Moon since its launch on 24 October, praised the mission at a ceremony to unveil the image on Monday.
鈥淭he full success of our country鈥檚 first lunar exploration mission is helping to turn the Chinese nation鈥檚 1000-year old dream of reaching the Moon a reality,鈥� Wen said. 鈥淭he Chinese nation is fully able to stand tall among the world鈥檚 ranks of advanced nations.鈥�
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State television showed the orbiter broadcasting into space 鈥淭he East is Red,鈥� the Communist Party鈥檚 old anthem to a rising China, when Wen visited. The revolutionary tune was also broadcast by China鈥檚 first satellite in 1970.
China has in recent years become a world space power. In 2003, China became only the third country to put a man into space using its own rocket after the former Soviet Union and the US. It then sent two astronauts on a five-day flight on its Shenzhou VI rocket in October 2005.
Human mission?
China plans to launch its third crewed rocket, Shenzhou VII, into space in October 2008 and may send an astronaut on a space walk, a Shanghai paper said.
But a space official downplayed plans to put a man on the Moon. 鈥淭here are no plans at the moment to send anyone on to the Moon. I鈥檝e heard of foreign reports which say China will put a man on the Moon by 2020, but I don鈥檛 know of such a plan,鈥� said Sun Laiyan, head of the China National Space Administration.
鈥淧lease don鈥檛 give us any more pressure. But I鈥檓 confident one day we鈥檒l put an astronaut on the Moon,鈥� he told a news conference.
The official China Daily newspaper said in October that China planned to put a man on the Moon 鈥渨ithin 15 years鈥�.
Chang鈥檈 1 has spectrometers to map the chemical composition of the Moon鈥檚 surface, a laser altimeter to map the Moon鈥檚 topography and a camera to photograph the surface.
Depth probe
It also boasts a radiometer that operates at microwave frequencies. The microwave radiometer will measure heat radiation coming from the Moon. This will allow it to map the depth of the lunar soil across the Moon鈥檚 surface because the layer鈥檚 thickness affects the flow of heat.
These measurements may also shed light on the proportion of radioactive elements like uranium and thorium inside the Moon, since their decay produces heat and should increase the amount of heat radiated by the Moon, says Paul Spudis of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, US, who is developing radar instruments to fly on LRO and Chandrayaan-1.
The amount of these elements would give clues to the Moon鈥檚 origins, he says, since different formation scenarios lead to different compositions.
Read more about China in New Scientist鈥荣 special China issue.
