China displayed the first image of the moon captured by its Chang'e 1 satellite at a gala ceremony yesterday, marking the formal start of the mission to document the lunar landscape.

Unveiling the image at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center, Premier Wen Jiabao hailed it as a major step in "the Chinese people's 1,000-year-old dream of exploring the moon."

The black-and-white image clearly showed craters of the moon's surface.

It was put together by 19 images shot by Chang'e 1 and released yesterday after experts finished processing and analyzing the photo.

"It showcases eloquently that the Chinese people have the will, the ambition and the capability to compose more shining new chapters while ascending the science and technology summit," Wen said.

A congratulatory letter jointly sent by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the State Council and the Central Military Commission encouraged scientists and engineers to make further contributions to China's future deep space explorations.

During the celebrations, work staff at the control center played greetings and music decoded from the data transmitted back to Earth via the satellite.

"I come with greetings from China," said a female voice that was programmed into Chang'e 1.

China hopes the probe, launched late last month, will have surveyed the entire surface of the moon at least once by early next year. The probe's launch closely followed the start of a similar mission by Japan, prompting speculation over a new space race in Asia. India plans to launch a lunar probe in April.

But Sun Laiyan, head of the China National Space Administration, considered China's lunar probe project a demonstration of the country's faith in peaceful use of space and its openness.

"China has cooperated with European countries and Russia during the Chang'e-1 project, and is willing to expand the exchanges and cooperation in its following space explorations based on the principle of mutual benefit and peaceful use of outer space," Sun told a news conference in Beijing yesterday.

In 2003, China became only the third country in the world after the United States and former Soviet Union to send a person into the Earth's orbit, following that up with a two-man mission in 2005.

But Sun said China had no plans to put a man on the moon - at least not just yet.

"For the time being we have no plans to send any Chinese onto the moon. But having said that, I'm confident that one day China will send a 'taikonaut' to the moon and I hope to see that day," Sun said, using the Chinese term for astronaut.

The Chang'e 1 satellite, slung into space by a Long March 3A rocket, will survey the moon's surface using stereo radar and other tools as a precursor to a planned lunar landing in 2012 and a mission to gather lunar samples by 2017.