BEIJING — Half a century after the Soviet Union beat the United States to outer space, China blasted off its first lunar orbiter Wednesday, catapulting the Asian nation onto the front lines of a new space race aimed at giving it bragging rights as a rising world power.
The Chang’e One satellite, named after a mythical beauty who flew to the moon, lifted off under cloudy skies in western China’s Sichuan province aboard a Long March A3 rocket.
It will spend a year circling and studying the lunar surface and laying the groundwork for the goal of making China the first Asian nation to put an astronaut on the moon.
The liftoff was broadcast on state television and witnessed by government officials and about 2,000 space enthusiasts who paid about $100 each to see it on-site. This expensive technological spectacle was in contrast to the evacuation of thousands of farmers in nearby villages who had to temporarily put away their plows and walk away from their pigs as a safety precaution in case of a mishap.
Like hosting the Olympics, the lunar mission is a symbolic opportunity for China to boost national pride in the one-party state.
“These things serve as a cohesive force for the whole nation,” said Ivan Choy, a political scientist at the City University of Hong Kong. “Even if you don’t believe in communism, at least you will try to accept that it is the leadership of the Communist Party that has made China strong and able to compete with the other superpowers.”
Beijing aspires to put an astronaut on the moon within 10 to 15 years, leaving it ahead of Japan, which launched an unmanned moon orbiter last month, and India, which hopes to do the same in April.
Next year’s planned mission is expected to carry three Chinese astronauts, known as taikonauts, who also could attempt the country’s first spacewalk.
Astronauts aboard the Apollo 17 were the last Americans on the moon, in 1972.
“I personally believe that China will be back on the moon before we are,” NASA Administrator Michael Griffin reportedly said in a lecture in Washington two weeks ago, marking the space agency’s 50th anniversary, still a year away.
Wednesday, Griffin congratulated China and opened the door to joint research.
