China's lunar probe completes 2nd orbital transfer
China's lunar probe Chang'e-1 is expected to arrive at the apogee of more than 70,000 kilometers from the earth on early Saturday morning after having completed its second orbital transfer on Friday, according to the moon probe team. Chang'e-1, China's first moon orbiter, is now moving on a 24-hour orbit and it is forecast to arrive at the apogee at around5:30 a.m. on Saturday. "Such a long distance will not be a challenge for our monitoring system. We have successfully accomplished missions to monitor a satellite which flies even further away from the earth," said Tang Ge, head of orbit monitoring and controlling office of the Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC).
"It still has about 1.19 million kilometers to go before it reaches the moon orbit as planned," said Zhang. According to Zhang, the moon orbiter will experience another two orbital transfers before it begins to fly to the moon in a real sense on Oct. 31.
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