GROUND CONTROL

Luan Enjie, chief commander of the lunar exploration centre, said on Thursday there were still problems to work out.

A Long March 4-B carrier rocket lifts off at 6:48 am Thursday, April 27, from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in North China's Shanxi Province. The rocket successfully sent a remote sensing satellite into its preset orbit. An official with the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, a major developer of both the satellite and the rocket, said the 2.7-ton satellite will be mainly used for scientific experiment, survey of land resources, appraisal of crops and disaster prevention and alleviation. [Xinhua]

Among them were how to remotely control the craft, how to handle widely varying temperatures on the moon, and how to coordinate gear that needed to be pointed in a specific direction, such as solar panels and communication equipment.

More generally, he said China was working on ways to standardise its rockets and increase their thrust, which he said was too small at about nine tonnes. China also had too many types of satellites and the quality was not high enough, he said.

Investment in the lunar exploration programme so far was less than 1.5 billion yuan ($187 million), he said. He did not give a figure for the total budget.

China's total annual investment in its space programmes was roughly $500 million, another Chinese space official said on a visit to the United States earlier this month.

In the United States, the Bush administration announced a $104 billion plan in September to return Americans to the moon by 2018. Its Apollo programme carried the first humans to the moon in 1969.

Japan has also announced plans to land a person on the moon by 2025.