BEIJING: China has said it will land an exploratory craft on the
moon for the first time next year, as part of an ambitious space
programme that includes a long-term plan to put a man on the
moon. China’s third lunar probe will blast off in the second
half of 2013 and attempt to land and transmit back a survey of
the moon’s surface, state television reported late Monday. If it
succeeds, experts said it would be the first craft to land on
the moon as part of a mission — as opposed to performing a
controlled crash landing at the end of one — since the Soviet
space programme achieved the feat in the 1970s. “They (China)
want a space programme that can be considered one of the finest
in the world,” said Morris Jones, an independent space analyst
based in Sydney, Australia. “If you want to be world leader in
space, then you have to do missions like this.” The landing
planned for next year would be China’s first on the lunar
surface and mark a new milestone in its space development. It is
part of a project to orbit