China's first lunar orbiter Chang'e 1 will start its probing of the moon in late November when all the instruments aboard shall be put into operation, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said yesterday.

"We expect the Chang'e 1 to send back the first lot of data and activate all its scientific instruments in late November," Li Guoping, the spokesman for CNSA, told a press conference.

"The ground system then shall be able to process these data and produce the first moon picture," he said.

Chang'e 1, launched on Oct. 24 in the Xichang launch center in southwest China's Sichuan Province, entered its final working orbit at 8:34am yesterday, after eight orbital maneuvers on its 1,800,000 km trip to the moon.

The orbiter shall stay on an 127-minute circular orbit 200 km above the moon for about one year.

"For the next step, Chang'e 1 will further adjust its orbit and start testing its instruments aboard," Li said.

The 2,350-kg orbiter is carrying eight probing facilities, including a stereo camera and interferometer, an imager and gamma/x-ray spectrometer, a laser altimeter, a microwave detector, a high energy solar particle detector and a low energy ion detector.

The scientific exploration by the probe is expected to fulfill four scientific objectives, including a three-dimensional survey of the Moon's surface, analysis of the abundance and distribution of elements on lunar surface, an investigation of the characteristics of lunar regolith and the powdery soil layer on the surface, and an exploration of the circumstance between the earth and the moon.

"The stereo camera will cover the whole moon surface within a month, and the microwave detector twice in a month," said Li.

By mid-January, all the instruments aboard shall have scanned the moon's entire surface for at least once, the spokesman said.