BEIJING (AP) - China said
its lunar probe had entered its final orbit around the moon Wednesday, but an
official backed away from reports of launching a space station by 2020.
The probe - called
Chang'e 1 after a mythical Chinese goddess who flew to the moon - made
final adjustments at the end of a two-week journey and entered its final
working orbit of 125 miles (201 kilometers) from the moon Wednesday where it
will explore its surface for the next year.
The first photo of the moon
should be sent back later this month, officials said. By early next year the
probe will have measured the whole surface of the moon at least once, officials
said.
China attaches great
prestige to its ambitious space program, seeing it as a way to validate its
claims to being one of the world's leading scientific nations. The country has
sent astronauts into space twice in the past four years and launched its moon
probe about a month after rival Japan. In 2003, China became only the third
country in the world after the United States and Russia to send a
human into orbit.
But officials denied state
media reports Wednesday that China was
planning a space station by 2020.
"So far, according to
the plans already published, there are no plans for a space station,'' Li
Guoping, spokesman of the China National Space Administration, said at a news
conference.
The China Daily
newspaper, said China's planned space station would be "a small-scale,
20-ton space workshop,'' quoting Long Lehao, a leading designer of the Long
March 3A rocket that carried the Chang'e 1 into space.
Chinese space officials
have said previously they wanted to build a space station in the next 10 or 15
years, but the target date of 2020 was the first time a schedule has been made
public, Long told China Daily.
The report did not say how
many people the station would be able to hold. But its weight is about
one-tenth that of the International
Space Station, which currently has three people on board.
The probe's launch raised
the prospect of a space rivalry between China and Japan, with India possibly
joining in if it carries through on a plan to send its own lunar probe into
space in April.
But Chinese officials have
played down talk of a space race, saying Beijing wanted to use its program to
work with other countries.
Li said China was willing
to participate in the International Space Station, joining the 16 countries
involved.
China has not participated
in the project in part because of U.S. unease about allowing a communist
dictatorship a place aboard.
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