China will launch a duplicate of the Chang'e-1 lunar probe in 2009 to fulfill new missions.

Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of China's lunar exploration project, said Saturday that China had produced two Chang'e-1 probe satellites at the same time.

Since the first satellite launched into orbit is working well, China's lunar exploration center send the duplicate probe on new missions. That means China will carry out a new moon probe mission in a further step of its deep space exploration.

Ouyang said the successful launch of the first lunar probe has mined rich data on moon exploration.

The Chang'e-1 satellite was launched on October 24, traveling a total distance of 1.8 million kilometers in 326 hours before entering the lunar orbit. During the flight, Chang'e-1 suffered several orbit transfers and brakings before entering orbit.

But Ouyang Ziyuan said that the second satellite will be launched in a simpler moon-oriented trajectory to enter the moon's orbit, in a different orbit and height from that of the Chang'e-1 satellite.

(CRI via china.org.cn December 2, 2007)