Shanghai Daily news

Shanghai has contributed two key engines for China's first lunar orbiter and is part of a national team coordinating its one-year mission.

"They will play key roles during the long journey," Han Hongyin, a researcher from Shanghai Institute for Space Propulsion (SISP), said yesterday.

One of the engines controls the third and final stage of the launch rocket Long March 3A, installed immediately below the orbiter. That will boost the orbiter into space about 200 kilometers above the earth.

The second engine will help maneuver the orbiter into place on its path around the moon around November 5.

The same engine has already completed 13 orbital transfer missions, including one for a Nigerian satellite.

Local astronomical researchers are part of a nationwide network to pinpoint the Chang'e 1 orbiter, named for a Chinese goddess who lived on the moon.

They will use a facility called VLBI or Very Long Baseline Interferometry to track the Chang'e 1, working together with the other four centers in Beijing, Yunnan Province and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

VLBI is a large astronomical radio monitor which locates moving objects in space by tracking their radio waves.

The local VLBI is a 25-meter-caliber facility on the east of Sheshan Mountain in the west of Shanghai.

The satellite launch is the country's first step in its three-stage lunar exploration through 2017.

About 2012, China plans to launch a remote-controlled lunar rover and an unmanned return module will follow in 2017. A manned lunar voyage is expected to come afterwards.

The Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology is one of the country's key research bases for space technology.

It has developed a prototype lunar rover that it hopes will be chosen for the country's first landing on the moon in 2012.

The rover, which travels at an average speed of 100 meters per hour and is 1.5 meters high and weighs 200 kilograms, is similar to America's Spirit rover which landed on Mars.

It is capable of taking three-dimensional images, transmitting real-time motion pictures, climbing slopes, avoiding obstacles and digging and analyzing soil samples.